Robert  Louis  Stevenson 


STEVENSON 

HOW  TO  KNOW  HIM 
RICHARD    ASHLEY    RICE 


WORDSWORTH 

HOW  TO  KNOW  HIM 

By  C.  T.  WINCHESTER 

Professor  of  English  Literature, 

Wesleyan  University 

CHRISTIAN  GAUSS,  Professor  of 
Modern   Languages,   Princeton 
University. 
"It  is  well  planned  and  most  en- 
gagingly written  with  a  background, 
taste   and  a   nice   sense   of   literary 
values,  and  points  the  way  fairly  to- 
ward   the    sympathetic    approach    to 
the   greatest  of  the   English  nature 
poets." 

DANTE 

HOW  TO  KNOW  HIM 

By  ALFRED  M.  BROOKS 

Professor  of  Fine  Arts, 

Indiana  University 

"One  gets  from  the  book  the  sense 
that  Dante  is  a  living  force  in  the 
present  world;  that  his  Divine  Com- 
edy is  filled  with  truth  and  wisdom 
in  the  mold  of  beauty;  that  it  is  a 
wonderful  book  which  should  be 
much  more  generally  read." 

DEFOE 

HOW  TO  KNOW  HIM 

By  WILLIAM  P.  TRENT 

Professor  of  English  Literature, 
Columbia  University 

Professor  Trent  is  the  greatest 
living  authority  on  Defoe  and  his 
work.  This  study  makes  the  man 
real  and  destroys  the  popular  con- 
ception of  Defoe  as  a  one-book 
author.  Any  reader  will  find  in 
these  carefully  chosen,  these  amply 
presented  selections  from  Defoe's 
writings  much  that  he  can  only 
find  with  difficulty  elsewhere,  much 
that  he  will  receive  with  gratitude. 
The  task  of  delving,  of  winnowing, 
of  piecing  together,  has  been  so  well 
done  that  future  editors  will  find 
their  path  made  smoother.  The 
book  follows  the  admirable  methods 
of  allowing  the  author  to  speak  for 
himself,  of  holding  the  editor  in  the 
background,  of  emphasizing  a  man's 
output  as  well  as  his  biography. 


rkeley 


STEVENSON 


VOLUMES  IN  THIS  SERIES 

PUBLISHED  AND  IN  PREPARATION 
Edited  by  Will  D.  Howe 

Arnold Stuart  P.  Sherman 

Browning William  Lyon  Phelps 

Burns W.  A.  Neilson 

Carlyle  * Bliss  Perry 

Dante Alfred  M.  Brooks 

Defoe William  P.  Trent 

Dickens Richard  Burton 

Emerson Samuel  M.  Crothers 

Hawthorne     .     .     .     .  \  .    George  E.  Woodberry 

The  Bible George  Hodges 

Ibsen Archibald  Henderson 

Lamb Will  D.  Howe 

Lowell John  H.  Finley 

Stevenson Richard  A.  Rice 

Tennyson Raymond  M.  Alden 

Whitman Brand  Whitlock 

Wordsworth G.  T.  Winchester 

Etc.,  Etc. 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson 

HOW  TO  KNOW  HIM 

By 
RICHARD    ASHLEY   RICE 

Professor  of  English  Literature  at  Smith  College 


With  Portrait 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright  1916 
The  Bobbs-Merrill  Company 


PRESS  OF 

BRAUNWOHTH    A    CO. 

BOOK   MANUFACTURERS 

BROOKLYN.   N.   Y. 


CONTENTS 

Chapter  Page 

I    The  Companionable  Author 1 

II    Child's  Play -  12 

III  Literature  and  the  Family  Profession   ....  34 

IV  Ordered  South 62 

V    Vagabondage  and  Craftsmanship 78 

VI    Vagabondage  and  Craftsmanship:  Barbizon     .    .  100 

VII    The  First  Great  Adventure 116 

VIII    III  Health  and  Ambition 138 

IX    The  Spirit  of  Romance 156 

X    Romance,  Melodrama,  and  Farce 190 

XI    The  Moral  Fables 246 

XII    The  Mirror  of  the  South  Seas 333 

XIII  The  Mirror  of  the  South  Seas:Vailima     .    .    .  349 

XIV  Looking  Down  from  the  Mill 372 

Passages  from  Stevenson's  Works 385 

Index      389 


STEVENSON 


STEVENSON 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  COMPANIONABLE  AUTHOR 
I 

STEVENSON  is  one  of  the  companionable  au- 
thors. He  has  been  able,  in  an  unusual  degree, 
to  give  himself  out  to  his  readers,  to  share  with 
them  his  purposes,  his  tastes,  his  experience  of  life. 
For  it  is  in  the  mutual  appreciation  of  these  things 
that  congeniality  between  people  usually  begins,  and 
it  is  in  the  stimulus,  the  suggestion,  the  criticism 
to  be  derived  from  them  that  companionship  is  al- 
ways fostered.  The  best  friends  are  they  who 
share  fully  and  imaginatively  each  other's  purposes, 
tastes,  and  past  experience.  And  if  this  is  the  gist 
of  a  man's  relation  to  his  fellows,  it  may  also  be  the 
secret  of  his  intimacy  with  his  companionable  books. 
In  the  case  of  Stevenson  and  his  readers  this  seems 
to  be  especially  full  of  meaning. 

Doubtless  there  is  a  distinction  between  a  man's 
favorite  books  and  his  most  companionable  author. 
Every  man  capable  of  literary  friendship  has,  or 
may  have,  a  few  books  peculiarly  his  own,  in  which 

1 


2  STEVENSON 

he  feels  himself  dwelling  with  the  characters  or  on 
a  journey  with  them,  discovering  from  them  not 
only  their  ideas  but  his  own,  just  as  one  does  in  the 
conversation  of  life,  with  surprise  and  satisfaction. 
But  it  is  only  the  great  books  which  are  thus  human, 
books  with  lifelong  friends,  books  to  be  often  revis- 
ited. Your  companionable  books  are  those  you  have 
reread.  That  is  the  first  definition  of  them,  and  it 
corresponds  to  what  might  be  said  of  your  best 
friends,  for  are  not  the  companionable  books  those 
which  you  begin  to  realize  you  will  always  be  re- 
reading, much  as  you  keep  dropping  in  on  your  best 
friends?  Such  books,  like  friends,  are  rare;  you 
can  not  often  discover  them  just  for  the  seeking, 
and,  having  suspected  their  kinship,  you  must  culti- 
vate them  with  all  the  sympathy  and  intelligence 
you  possess  in  order  to  deserve  the  best  they  have 
to  give  in  return. 

Companionable  books,  in  this  sense,  we  have  all 
known.  There  are,  in  another  sense  that  we  do 
not  quite  so  often  appreciate,  companionable  au- 
thors. And  this,  as  I  say,  is  a  distinction  not  with- 
out a  difference.  The  companionable  author  may  or 
may  not  have  written  any  of  your  two  or  three 
most  admired  books.  He  may  or  may  not  be  one 
of  the  great  figures  in  literature.  Perhaps  he  is, 
in  fact,  a  very  humble  one.  He  must  be,  how- 
ever, the  author  of  books  you  read  in  order  to  be 
with  him.  He  must  be  a  man  of  whose  biography 
and  letters  you  are  a  student,  and  about  whom  every 
scrap  of  information  and  gossip  has  come  to  have 


THE   COMPANIONABLE   AUTHOR      3 

a  personal  interest — a  man  whose  mind  you  know, 
whose  temper  you  have  grown  used  to,  whose  char- 
acter you  love,  because  they  are  his.  You  know  his 
faults,  and  you  are  his  defender;  you  know  his 
virtues,  and  you  are  his  critic.  He  belongs  to  you. 
He  may  be  centuries  old  and  of  towering  fame,  he 
may  have  died  obscurely  last  week ;  but  he  is  yours, 
your  part  of  this  world's  genius. 

The  companionable  author,  whether  great  or 
small  in  intellectual  stature,  is  of  more  value  to  you 
who  possess  him  than  any  of  his  books.  I  had  al- 
most said,  than  any  book.  Especially  does  this  ap- 
pear to  be  true  in  the  case  of  Robert  Louis  Steven- 
son, who  has  written  no  long  sustained  great  work 
of  art,  but  whose  literary  production  as  a  whole 
makes  him  the  fluent,  easy,  sympathetic,  encourag- 
ing companion  par  excellence,  whom  to  know,  in 
his  good  and  in  his  less  good,  is  always  a  personal 
and  companionable  experience.  For  if  he  has  left 
us  no  very  great  books,  he  has  instead  left  us  him- 
self, and  that  more  completely  and  confidingly,  and 
hence,  to  those  who  like  him,  more  en  joy  ably,  than 
perhaps  any  other  modern  writer.  He  lives  as  a 
part  of  everything  he  writes,  naturally,  without 
subtlety,  though  in  many  a  different  dress  and  pose 
for  which  his  fancy  and  his  genial  egotism  gave 
him  the  zest. 

The  genial  egotist — that  is  his  literary  character. 
If  you  do  not  like  him,  you  do  not  like  his  books. 
"Le  style  c'est  Vhomrne;"  and  in  Stevenson's  case, 
it  is,  "Uhomme  c'est  tout"    You  may  know  easily 


4  STEVENSON 

whether  you  like  him;  too  easily  some  would  say, 
who  prefer  more  reserve,  more  subtlety,  who  find 
their  truest  delight  in  Henry  James,  who  like  their 
Thackeray  the  better  for  his  long,  fascinating  game 
of  hide-and-seek  with  the  reader  round  the  corners 
of  the  comedy,  and  Meredith  for  the  smile  of  baf- 
fling irony  that  vaguely  marks  his  presence  on  the 
scene.  Stevenson  is  accessible  and  intimate.  Not 
only  does  he  exist  bodily  in  one  of  the  best  biogra- 
phies and  in  four  surpassing  volumes  of  letters,  but 
also  in  nearly  every  romance,  essay  and  tale  which 
came  from  his  pen.  He  had  the  autobiographic 
habit.  It  makes  the  warp  and  woof  of  his  art. 
His  chief  motive  seems  to  be  to  reintroduce  himself 
and  his  history  to  the  reader  until  he  is  on  the  per- 
sonal footing  of  an  old  friend. 

To  do  this  without  egotism  is  impossible.  It  re- 
quires the  very  essence  and  energy  of  an  egotism 
that  is  ever  fresh.  But  we  do  not  misunderstand. 
Stevenson  in  his  personal  talk  is  not  exploiting  him- 
self after  the  fashion  of  those  notorieties  who  now 
so  often  "sell  their  lives"  very  dearly  to  the  maga- 
zines. His  constant  gossip  about  himself,  his  ances- 
tors, his  plans,  his  morality,  springs  from  a  natural 
and  social  instinct.  It  rarely  grows  stale.  It  is 
something  like  the  willingness  to  be  confidential  in 
Charles  Lamb  and  something  like  the  desire  to  sur- 
prise in  Hazlitt.  It  is  both  frank  and  delicate,  like 
the  talk  of  those  men. 

Stevenson  needs  no  introduction.  His  hat  is  al- 
ways in  his  hand,  and  you  see  at  once  if  his  looks 


THE   COMPANIONABLE   AUTHOR      5 

are  to  your  fancy.  If  they  are,  trust  him;  he  will 
be  glad  to  show  you  around.  Have  you  a  taste  for 
old  inns,  for  smugglers  and  pirates  and  all  kinds  of 
sea-dogs,  for  the  wind  in  the  rigging  and  the  smell 
of  oakum?  Is  your  fancy  haunted  with  strange 
islands,  tropical  forests,  cargoes  of  champagne,  coral 
reefs,  and  buried  treasure?  He  will  know  how  to 
do  by  you  properly.  Do  you  care  for  walking  tours, 
roadside  gossip,  sleeping  out  under  the  stars,  or  a 
fire,  a  change  of  clothes,  and  a  whiff  of  comfortable 
tobacco  to  help  you  think  it  all  over  again?  Then 
Stevenson  is  your  man.  Or  do  you  happen  to  feel 
that  life  is  as  humdrum  as  a  kitchen  stove  and  all 
the  world  made  of  dust  and  money,  that  you  have 
forgotten  how  to  play  and  that  work  is  only  a  way 
of  killing  time?  Perhaps  Stevenson  will  put  you 
right  and  be  very  agreeable  about  it  too.  Are  you 
in  danger  of  forgetting  how  it  feels  to  be  young 
or  what  is  the  fun  of  growing  old;  is  your  health 
dwindling  and  your  courage  not  increasing  to  match 
the  issue;  does  your  wife  appear  unromantic  and 
querulous  about  the  future,  and  is  she  given  to  a 
lot  of  Grundyism,  and  you  to  other  forms  of  spe- 
cious morality,  in  short,  are  you  both  becoming  as 
trite  as  two  sticks?  Stevenson  is  your  doctor — 
of  medicine  and  of  philosophy.  His  medicine  is 
thought  and  his  philosophy  laughter;  and  you  are 
not  worthy  of  your  rightful  share  in  him  if  you 
do  not  take  them  alternately  in  large  doses.  He  will 
finally  teach  you  to  prescribe  for  yourself. 

Now,  of  course,  he  will  want  to  do  most  of  the 


6  STEVENSON 

talking  and  to  talk  much  about  himself.  That  is  a 
condition  of  his  companionship.  He  will  expect 
you  to  admire  him  when  he  says  a  good  thing,  to 
enjoy  his  gesticulations  and  to  unlimber  a  little  in 
return.  And  if  you  happen  to  have  no  enthusiasm 
for  amusing  trivialities,  for  toy  soldiers  and  ghost 
stories  and  castles  in  the  air,  maps  and  plans  and  the 
unendable  beginnings  of  many  things  in  his  con- 
tinual child's  play,  you  must  still  pretend,  you  must 
play-act  now  and  then  to  the  top  of  your  bent,  or 
you  will  spoil  his  fun.  He  is  a  child,  a  wise  youth, 
a  mature  man,  a  blind  adventurer,  or  an  ardent, 
hopeful  dreamer,  as  the  kaleidoscope  of  his  nature 
turns.  But  he  is  always  himself  and  never  confus- 
ing. His  romances  do  not  always  have  a  clear  goal, 
and  his  romantic  philosophy  is  sometimes  paradox- 
ical; but  in  his  own  life,  romance  is  the  simplest  of 
human  qualities. 

The  romantic  and  genial  egotist.  It  is  the  ro- 
mance of  Stevenson's  outward  life,  corresponding 
to  the  romantic  courage  of  his  inward  nature  and 
the  expression  of  both  in  his  books,  that  has  fasci- 
nated most  of  us.  His  child's  dream  of  a  life  of 
story  and  adventure,  his  cheerful  fight  to  live  at  all, 
his  marriage,  his  literary  and  most  human  success 
in  which  we  all  seemed  to  have  a  part,  his  disappear- 
ance at  last  into  the  far  seas  of  fiction  where  he 
became  like  a  legend  that  grows — this  is  all  within 
our  memory.  He  arrived  in  New  York  only  the 
other  day  and  disappeared  again,  hull  and  topsails 
down  into  the  Westward.    It  is  some  twenty  years 


THE    COMPANIONABLE    AUTHOR      7 

ago,  and  you  were  perhaps,  like  me,  a  schoolboy 
just  launching  on  your  first  voyage  in  the  real  books, 
a  voyage  that  once  properly  started  never  comes  to 
an  end.  Has  not  Stevenson  at  least  helped  you  to 
prolong  it?  It  is  twenty  years  since  he  died;  but 
somewhere  off  the  edge  of  the  known  world,  so  the 
legend  goes,  his  adventure  continues,  and  we  may 
all  follow  it.  Remembering  his  companionship,  we 
follow  in  our  real  adventures.  Or  for  the  moment 
lacking  any  to  our  fancy,  we  sit  down  by  our  fire- 
sides to  live  out  the  philosophy  of  youth  with  Virgin- 
ibus  Puerisque;  or,  in  illustration,  start  once  more 
with  Dennis  de  Beaulieu  into  the  hostile  town,  or 
plod  fearsomely  through  the  snow  with  Francois 
Villon  to  knock  on  the  Seigneur  de  Brisetout's  door. 
We  turn  the  page  to  smile  at  Franchard's  optimism, 
or  at  Prince  Florizel's  bravado,  so  like  the  bravado 
and  optimism  of  R.  L.  S.,  so  genial,  so  sustaining. 
The  night  wears  on,  the  page  glows  brighter,  our 
worldliness,  our  mistakes,  our  truisms,  fall  from  us, 
and  when  we  at  last  put  out  the  candle  it  is  in  an- 
other country,  the  country  of  the  romance  and  the 
idealism  of  youth. 


II 


Stevenson  is  so  whimsical,  so  mobile,  so  full  of 
fancies,  experiments  and  surprises,  that  he  is  not 
to  be  described  far  in  advance.  We  shall  see  him 
through  his  books,  as  we  come  to  them;  and  since 
they  are  so  truly  the  mirror  of  his  whole  life,  and 


8  STEVENSON 

correspond,  the  best  of  them,  to  the  best  of  his 
hopes,  we  shall  so  arrange  our  discussion  of  their 
philosophy  and  their  art  that  it  may  be  illuminated 
by  the  facts  and  the  hopes  of  his  career.  We  shall 
see  him  first  in  certain  essays  and  poems  as  a  fan- 
ciful, playful  child,  living  in  his  father's  house  in 
a  world  of  his  own,  and  developing  the  peculiarly 
youthful  imagination  that  governs  his  maturest  art. 
That  his  ambition  to  use  this  imagination  in  litera- 
ture formed  under  his  father's  eyes  directly  counter 
to  the  interests  of  the  family  profession,  determines 
the  first  act  in  the  drama  of  his  life.  We  shall  see 
him  next,  in  various  books  and  sketches,  having  his 
way,  making  the  seemingly  irresponsible  and  vaga- 
bond experiments  his  heart  was  set  on  and  proving 
that  the  splendid  inheritance  of  nervous  energy  from 
his  forebears  could  serve  him  well  in  a  new  kind  of 
labor,  in  a  new  conflict.  Out  of  this  conflict  be- 
tween ill  health  and  ambition,  tempered  by  the  for- 
tune of  his  marriage,  he  makes  his  philosophy  of 
life.  It  is  a  romantic  philosophy,  not  a  philosophy 
of  success;  and  we  shall  see  finally  that  both  his 
long  and  cheerful  search  for  health,  and  also  the 
books  he  wrote  meanwhile  are  its  romantic  illus- 
tration. 

For  while  Stevenson  was  whimsical  and  full  of 
experimental  variety  to  the  end,  he  was  not  capri- 
cious. He  was  one  of  the  sanest  of  men.  His 
career  and  his  production  are  each  consistent.  Hii 
purposes  grow  steadily  plainer  and  are  in  the  end 
easily  definable.     He  is  that  rare  man  whose  doc- 


THE    COMPANIONABLE   AUTHOR      9 

trine  accords  with  his  experience  whether  announced 
before  or  after.  He  is  that  rare  man  who  appears, 
in  spite  of  jarring  difficulties  in  life,  to  have  seen 
it  whole  and  to  have  made  the  most  of  it. 

Let  me  briefly  describe  some  of  the  general  pe- 
culiarities that  belong  alike  to  this  man  and  to  his 
books. 

In  them  both  the  inherent  and  personal  quality  is 
romance.  What  I  mean  here  by  romance  is  this: 
Stevenson  was  so  fond  of  using  his  imagination 
about  all  matters,  of  "supposing,"  as  he  used  to  say, 
that  to  him  nothing  looked  as  it  might  to  the  ordi- 
nary person.  Nothing  appeared  obvious,  and  until  it 
struck  his  fancy  in  some  peculiar  light  he  did  not 
care  to  think  about  it  at  all.  This  was  part  of  his 
egotism,  which  was,  in  most  respects,  a  poetic 
egotism.  At  times,  it  is  true,  this  makes  his  style  and 
his  attitude  only  appear  forced  or  strange;  far  oft- 
ener  it  makes  him  think  and  act  freely  and  originally. 
For  it  is  through  a  poetic  imagination  that  he  be- 
comes individual.  But  his  romantic  independence, 
with  its  resulting  criticism  of  the  conventional  world, 
was  not  in  any  sense  unsocial.  Though  he  rebelled 
against  the  accepted  ideas  of  respectability,  morals 
and  religion,  he  is  not  a  rebel.  He  is,  like  Addison, 
like  Hazlitt,  like  Lamb,  the  genial,  if  somewhat  satir- 
ical, critic  of  humanity.  Like  them  he  is  first  of  all 
social ;  only  you  must  take  him  as  he  is — and  he  in- 
sists on  being  taken,  you  can  not  ignore  him — in  his 
soft  collar  and  old  velvet  jacket.  His  eccentricities,  in 
fact,  served  him  as  points  of  contact  with  the  world. 


10  STEVENSON 

If  they  increased  his  feeling  of  self,  they  also 
helped  him  to  get  more  action  out  of  life;  they  pre- 
vented the  stale  from  growing  too  stale,  and  called 
adventure  from  otherwise  calm  seas.  Stevenson 
always  remained  peculiarly  sensitive  to  life.  His 
rough  experience  never  made  him  callous.  Hence 
his  ultimate  philosophy  is  marked  by  no  detachment 
or  aloofness  from  the  world.  His  moral  force  of 
character  and  the  chief  thought  of  his  serious  writ- 
ing is  best  described  by  the  words  cheerful  courage. 
It  comes  from  his  own  experience  of  life.  It  is 
intimate,  not  theoretic.  All  courage  is  not  cheerful. 
Some  of  it  is  grim,  stern,  and  unsocial,  the  courage 
of  the  man  who  takes  the  bit  in  the  teeth  or  who 
bolsters  up  his  spirit  with  zeal.  There  is  a  sense 
of  humor  in  Stevenson's  courage,  a  sense  of  propor- 
tion, which  makes  it  suitable  to  conditions.  It  often 
assumes  the  form  of  banter  or  of  bravado,  when  it 
does  not  need  to  rise  to  the  heights ;  and  it  is  always 
sane  and  sweet. 

I  know  there  is  another  side  to  this.  For  there 
are  people  who  remember  Stevenson  chiefly  as  a 
nervous  eccentric,  an  irritable  invalid,  rather  offish 
in  manner;  or  as  a  sort  of  flibbertigibbet  and  clever- 
ling,  a  man  who  liked,  for  example,  after  sitting 
long  perfectly  quiet  in  a  room  full  of  people,  sud- 
denly to  burst  into  meteoric  flaming  talk  and  wild 
gesticulation,  leaving  the  impression  of  mere  queer- 
ness  and  affectation.  There  are  people  in  Edinburgh 
who  still  think  of  him  as  the  lad  who  could  not 
stick  to  his  job,  who  worried  his  father  to  death 


THE   COMPANIONABLE   AUTHOR    11 

with  queer  doings,  and  gave  away  a  lot  of  good 
hard-earned  Scotch  money  to  French  ne'er-do-weels 
in  Paris  and  Barbizon.  Stevenson  was  eccentric. 
He  had  a  temper.  He  was  a  sensitive  and  often  irri- 
table invalid.  He  was  not  very  orderly  in  his  way 
of  living,  and  seemed  to  be  largely  incapable  of  tak- 
ing decent  precautions  for  the  sake  of  his  health. 
He  liked  now  to  magnify  his  troubles  and  now  to 
make  naught  of  them,  as  we  all  do  in  order  to  be 
martyrs  or  heroes  in  our  fancy.  He  liked  to  dress 
queerly  for  the  sake  of  the  sensation  it  gave  him 
to  be  outwardly  different  from  other  people,  and 
then  to  take  offense  at  those  who  could  not  see 
through  his  disguise.  He  had  a  wonderful  gift  for 
exaggeration,  for  becoming  fascinated  with  his  own 
flights  of  fancy  and  with  the  words  of  his  mouth. 
He  never  presented  exactly  a  standard  of  excellence, 
and  you  can  say  little  about  him  that  you  must  not 
soon  contradict.  Yet  such  a  statement  does  not  in- 
validate the  essential  consistency  of  the  man,  if  you 
know  him. 

The  popular  idea  of  Stevenson  is  the  true  one. 
I  have  no  new  picture  to  offer.  He  is  the  Stevenson 
of  his  own  books,  and  by  them  we  shall  see  him. 


CHAPTER  II 


CHILD  S   PLAY 


AMONG  the  characteristic  amusements  of  Ste- 
venson was  his  game  of  fancy  about  what  he 
called  his  antenatal  life.  Most  of  us  think  of  our 
ancestors  a  few  generations  back  only  a  little  less  im- 
personally than  of  the  presidents  of  the  United 
States,  but  Stevenson  always  felt  that  he  was  bound 
in  and  with  his  forebears.  Some  part  of  their  ad- 
ventures still  stirred  in  his  blood  like  physical  mem- 
ories; and  this  young  man,  so  delicate  of  limb,  so 
often  confined  to  the  house  for  weeks  at  a  time  in 
the  bad  Edinburgh  weather,  used  to  encourage  in 
himself  the  notion  that  it  had  not  been  always  thus, 
that  parts  of  him  had  seen  life,  and  that,  on  the 
northern  seas  with  his  grandfather,  the  builder  of 
the  Bell  Rock  Light,  with  his  great  uncles  in  the 
Caribbean,  with  military  ancestors  still  more  remote, 
he  had  played  a  greater  role. 

So,  whatever  is  the  real  significance  of  heredity 
in  forming  the  temper  and  genius  of  men,  Robert 
Louis  himself  liked  to  be  a  strict  evolutionist.  On 
his  father's  side  was  a  line  of  devout,  Calvinistic, 
iron  men  of  action,  adventurers  and  fighters,  and, 

12 


CHILD'S   PLAY  13 

in  his  father  and  grandfather,  followers  of  that 
hardest  and  most  fascinating  of  adventurous  call- 
ings, lighthouse  building.  This  was  the  family  pro- 
fession. The  Stevensons  had  built  the  most  famous 
lights  on  the  Scotch  coast,  Bell  Rock  and  Skerry- 
vore.  Thomas  Stevenson,  as  his  father  before  him, 
was  sole  engineer  to  the  Northern  Board  of  Lights ; 
and  though  Louis  was  too  delicate  in  health  when 
the  time  came  to  take  up  this  work  in  earnest,  he 
nevertheless  had  in  his  nerves  the  grim  determina- 
tion it  would  have  required.  He  was  to  use  it  to 
battle  against  even  more  terrible  elements  than  sea 
and  wind.  From  these  men  he  liked  to  think  he 
had  his  love  of  far  adventure,  his  intense  love  of  the 
sea  and  of  the  open  road.  His  immediate  relation- 
ship with  his  father  was  not,  however,  always  a 
happy  one.  His  father,  a  whimsical  and  extremely 
imaginative  man  with  a  peculiar  gift  for  bizarre 
conversation,  was  of  a  stern,  moody,  melancholic 
disposition.  He  was  too  much  like  his  son  on  one 
side,  too  violently  different  on  another,  ever  to  un- 
derstand him  well.  Louis's  mother,  a  brilliant  and 
cheerful  woman,  with  a  zest  for  society  and  an  un- 
usual literary  taste,  came  of  a  family  of  Scotch 
divines;  and  her  son's  peculiar  streak  of  gay  mor- 
ality, the  piquant  optimism  that  tinges  all  his  essays 
and  the  philosophy  of  nearly  all  his  heroes  of  fic- 
tion, is  the  fancied  inheritance  from  her.  "About 
the  very  cradle  of  the  Scot  there  goes  a*  hum  of 
metaphysical  divinity,"  writes  Stevenson  in  one  of 
his  moralizings  on  this  aspect  of  his  character. 


14  STEVENSON 

It  was  at  his  clergyman  grandfather's  house, 
Colinton  Manse,  a  few  miles  from  Edinburgh,  that 
his  childhood  was  largely  passed;  and  his  ancestral 
adventures  on  both  sides  of  the  family,  described 
in  that  "memory  and  portrait"  which  he  calls  "The 
Manse,"  will  serve  to  introduce  us,  after  his  own 
fanciful  fashion,  to  Stevenson  himself. 

"Now  I  often  wonder  what  I  have  inherited  from 
this  old  minister.  I  must  suppose,  indeed,  that  he 
was  fond  of  preaching  sermons,  and  so  am  I,  though 
I  never  heard  it  maintained  that  either  of  us  loved 
to  hear  them.  He  sought  health  in  his  youth  in 
the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  I  have  sought  it  in  both  hemi- 
spheres ;  but  whereas  he  found  and  kept  it,  I  am  still 
on  the  quest.  He  was  a  great  lover  of  Shakespeare, 
whom  he  read  aloud,  I  have  been  told,  with  taste; 
well,  I  love  my  Shakespeare  also,  and  am  persuaded 
I  can  read  him  well,  though  I  own  I  never  have  been 
told  so.  He  made  embroidery,  designing  his  own 
patterns;  and  in  that  kind  of  work  I  never  made 
anything  but  a  kettle-holder  in  Berlin  wool  and  an 
odd  garter  of  knitting,  which  was  as  black  as  the 
chimney  before  I  had  done  with  it.  He  loved  port, 
and  nuts  and  porter;  and  so  do  I,  but  they  agreed 
better  with  my  grandfather,  which  seems  to  me  a 
breach  of  contract.  He  had  chalk-stones  in  his  fin- 
gers ;  and  these,  in  good  time,  I  may  possibly  inherit, 
but  I  would  much  rather  have  inherited  his  noble 
presence.  Try  as  I  please,  I  cannot  join  myself  on 
with  the  reverend  doctor;  and  all  the  while,  no 


CHILD'S   PLAY  15 

doubts  and  even  as  I  write  the  phrase,  he  moves  in 
my  blood  and  whispers  words  to  me,  and  sits  effi- 
cient in  the  very  knot  and  center  of  my  being.  In 
his  garden,  as  I  played  there,  I  learned  the  love  of 
mills — or  had  I  an  ancestor  a  miller? — and  a  kind- 
ness for  the  neighborhood  of  graves,  as  homely 
things  not  without  their  poetry — or  had  I  an  ances- 
tor a  sexton?  But  what  of  the  garden  where  he 
played  himself? — for  that,  too,  was  a  scene  of  my 
education.  Some  part  of  me  played  there  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  ran  races  under  the  green 
avenue  at  Pilrig;  some  part  of  me  trudged  up 
Leith  Walk,  which  was  still  a  country  place,  and  sat 
on  the  High  School  benches,  and  was  thrashed,  per- 
haps, by  Doctor  Adam.  The  house  where  I  spent 
my  youth  was  not  yet  thought  upon;  but  we  made 
holiday  parties  among  the  cornfields  on  its  site,  and 
ate  strawberries  and  cream  near  by  at  a  gardener's. 
All  this  I  had  forgotten,  only  my  grandfather  re- 
membered and  once  reminded  me.  I  have  forgot- 
ten, too,  how  we  grew  up,  and  took  orders,  and  went 
to  our  first  Ayrshire  parish,  and  fell  in  love  with 
and  married  a  daughter  of  Burns's  Doctor  Smith — 
'Smith  opens  out  his  cauld  harangues.'  I  have  for- 
gotten, but  I  was  there  all  the  same,  and  heard 
stories  of  Burns  at  first  hand. 

"And  there  is  a  thing  stranger  than  all  that;  for 
this  homunculus  or  part-man  of  mine  that  walked 
about  the  eighteenth  century  with  Doctor  Balfour 
in  his  youth,  was  in  the  way  of  meeting  other 
homunculos  or  part-men,   in  the  persons  of  my 


16  STEVENSON 

other  ancestors.  These  were  of  a  lower  order,  and 
doubtless  we  looked  down  upon  them  duly.  But  as 
I  went  to  college  with  Doctor  Balfour,  I  may  have 
seen  the  lamp  and  oil  man  taking  down  the  shutters 
from  his  shop  beside  the  Tron ; — we  may  have  had 
a  rabbit-hutch  or  a  bookshelf  made  for  us  by  a  cer- 
tain carpenter  in  I  know  not  what  wynd  of  the  old, 
smoky  city;  or,  upon  some  holiday  excursion,  we 
may  have  looked  into  the  windows  of  a  cottage  in 
a  flower-garden  and  seen  a  certain  weaver  plying 
his  shuttle.  And  these  were  all  kinsmen  of  mine 
upon  the  other  side;  and  from  the  eyes  of  the  lamp 
and  oil  man,  one-half  of  my  unborn  father  and  one- 
quarter  of  myself,  looked  out  upon  us  as  we  went  by 
to  college.  Nothing  of  all  this  would  cross  the 
mind  of  the  young  student,  as  he  posted  up  the 
Bridges  with  trim,  stockinged  legs,  in  that  city  of 
cocked  hats  and  good  Scotch,  still  unadulterated. 
It  would  not  cross  his  mind  that  he  should  have  a 
daughter;  and  the  lamp  and  oil  man,  just  then 
beginning,  by  a  not  unnatural  metastasis,  to  bloom 
into  a  light-house  engineer,  should  have  a  grandson ; 
and  that  these  two,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  should 
wed;  and  some  portion  of  that  student  himself 
should  survive  yet  a  year  or  two  longer  in  the  per- 
son of  their  child. 

"But  our  ancestral  adventures  are  beyond  even 
the  arithmetic  of  fancy;  and  it  is  the  chief  recom- 
mendation of  long  pedigrees  that  we  can  follow 
backward  the  careers  of  our  homunculi  and  be  re- 
minded of  our  antenatal  lives.    Our  conscious  years 


CHILD'S    PLAY  17 

are  but  a  moment  in  the  history  of  the  elements 
that  build  us.  Are  you  a  bank  clerk,  and  do  you  live 
at  Peckham  ?  It  was  not  always  so.  And  though  to- 
day I  am  only  a  man  of  letters,  either  tradition  errs 
or  I  was  present  when  there  landed  at  St.  Andrews 
a  French  barber-surgeon,  to  tend  the  health  and  the 
beard  of  the  great  Cardinal  Beaton;  I  have  shaken 
a  spear  in  the  Debatable  Land  and  shouted  the  slo- 
gan of  the  Elliots;  I  was  present  when  a  skipper, 
plying  from  Dundee,  smuggled  Jacobites  to  France 
after  the  '15 ;  I  was  in  a  West  India  merchant's 
office,  perhaps  next  door  to  Bailie  Nichol  Jarvie's, 
and  managed  the  business  of  a  plantation  in  St. 
Kitt's;  I  was  with  my  engineer-grandfather  (the 
son-in-law  of  the  lamp  and  oil  man)  when  he  sailed 
north  about  Scotland  on  the  famous  cruise  that  gave 
us  the  Pirate  and  the  Lord  of  the  Isles;  I  was  with 
him,  too,  on  the  Bell  Rock,  in  the  fog,  when  the 
Smeaton  had  drifted  from  her  moorings,  and  the 
Aberdeen  men,  pick  in  hand,  had  seized  upon  the 
only  boats,  and  he  must  stoop  and  lap  sea-water 
before  his  tongue  could  utter  audible  words;  and 
once  more  with  him  when  the  Bell  Rock  beacon 
took  a  'thrawe,'  and  his  workmen  fled  into  the 
tower,  then  nearly  finished,  and  he  sat  unmoved  read- 
ing in  his  Bible — or  affecting  to  read — till  one  after 
another  slunk  back  with  confusion  of  countenance 
to  their  engineer.  Yes,  parts  of  me  have  seen  life, 
and  met  adventures,  and  sometimes  met  them  well. 
And  away  in  the  still  cloudier  past,  the  threads  that 
make  me  up  can  be  traced  by  fancy  into  the  bosoms 


18  STEVENSON 

of  thousands  and  millions  of  ascendants;  Picts  who 
rallied  round  Macbeth  and  the  old  (and  highly- 
preferable)  system  of  descent  by  females,  fleers 
from  before  the  legions  of  Agricola,  marchers  in 
Pannonian  morasses,  star-gazers  on  Chaldean  pla- 
teaus; and,  furthest  of  all,  what  face  is  this  that 
fancy  can  see  peering  through  the  disparted 
branches?  What  sleeper  in  green  tree-tops,  what 
muncher  of  nuts,  concludes  my  pedigree?  Proba- 
bly arboreal  in  his  habits.    .    .    . 

"And  I  know  not  which  is  the  more  strange ;  that 
I  should  carry  about  with  me  some  fibres  of  my 
minister-grandfather;  or  that  in  him,  as  he  sat  in 
his  cool  study,  grave,  reverend,  contented  gentle- 
man, there  was  an  aboriginal  frisking  of  the  blood 
that  was  not  his;  tree-top  memories;  like  undevel- 
oped negatives,  lay  dormant  in  his  mind;  tree-top 
instincts  awoke  and  were  trod  down;  and  Probably 
Arboreal  (scarce  to  be  distinguished  from  a  mon- 
key) gambolled  and  chattered  in  the  brain  of  the 
old  divine." — 'The  Manse,"  Memories  and  Por- 
traits. 

II 

His  energies  and  tastes  perhaps  thus  forming  in 
innumerable  antenatal  lives,  Stevenson  was  born 
from  out  the  past  of  romantic  adventure  and  meta- 
physical divinity,  in  the  romantic  and  metaphysical 
city  of  Edinburgh,  in  1850.  All  his  life  he  was  to  ro- 
manticize and  moralize  his  experience.  In  fact  to  do 
both  at  once,  to  make  morality  romantic  and  ro- 


CHILD'S    PLAY  19 

mance  into  a  moral,  was  to  be  his  chief  originality 
as  an  author.  So  his  playful  fancy  is  here  very  sig- 
nificant. 

But  the  more  immediate  reality  of  his  inheritance 
appears  in  a  weak  chest  and  tendency  to  colds  which 
he  inherited  from  his  mother,  and  which  during 
childhood  caused  him  to  be  taken  continually  to  the 
shore  at  North  Berwick  or  to  Colinton  for  the  bet- 
ter air.  After  moving  twice  in  the  city  before  he 
was  eight  years  old,  the  family  settled  at  17  Heriot 
Row,  on  high  ground,  with  a  view  from  the  back 
windows  of  the  house  over  the  Water  of  Leith. 
Stevenson  was  so  delicate  that,  much  of  the  time, 
even  when  he  had  begun  to  go  to  school,  he  was  a 
housed  boy;  and  not  until  after  two  winters  spent 
in  Mentone,  when  he  was  thirteen  and  fourteen, 
does  the  struggle  against  sickness  appear  to  have 
abated,  and  then  only  for  a  few  years. 

Though  this  was  largely  the  fault  of  the  Scotch 
climate,  which  he  hated,  he  was  to  the  end  of  his 
life,  so  much  of  which  he  lived  in  foreign  lands,  a 
thorough  Scot.  He  is  among  those  famous  Scots, 
like  Burns  and  Sir  Walter,  who  have  definitely  in- 
creased the  fund  of  patriotism  in  the  whole  world 
by  their  romantic  feeling  for  their  own  land.  For 
perhaps  no  race  loves  its  racial  and  tribal  home  so 
much  as  does  his.  "Scotland,"  an  old  man  said  to 
me  once,  after  boasting  of  the  vigorous  climate  of 
his  country,  "is  a  hard  mother  to  her  sons.  That  is 
why  we  are  all  so  great!"  She  proved  a  hard 
mother  to  Stevenson ;  and  I  think  she  had  much  to 


20  STEVENSON 

do  with  making  him  great,  in  spite  of  her  terrible 
weather  and  sea  fogs  which  nearly  killed  him,  and 
which  finally  drove  him  forever  from  her  shores. 
No  country  has  had  a  greater  hold  on  the  imagina- 
tion of  its  people  or  has  been  more  stimulating  to 
effort. 

"A  Scottish  child  hears  much  of  shipwreck,  out- 
lying iron  skerries,  pitiless  breakers,  and  great  sea- 
lights  ;  much  of  heathery  mountains,  wild  clans,  and 
hunted  Covenanters.  Breaths  come  to  him  in  song 
of  the  distant  Cheviots  and  the  ring  of  foraying 
hoofs.  He  glories  in  his  hard-fisted  forefathers,  of 
the  iron  girdle  and  the  handful  of  oatmeal,  who 
rode  so  swiftly  and  lived  so  sparely  on  their  raids. 
Poverty,  ill-luck,  enterprise,  and  constant  resolu- 
tion are  the  fibres  of  the  legend  of  his  country's 
history.  The  heroes  and  kings  of  Scotland  have 
been  tragically  fated ;  the  most  marking  incidents  in 
Scottish  history — Flodden,  Darien,  or  the  Forty- 
five — were  still  either  failures  or  defeats;  and  the 
fall  of  Wallace  and  the  repeated  reverses  of  the 
Bruce  combine  with  the  very  smallness  of  the  coun- 
try to  teach  rather  a  moral  than  a  material  criterion 
for  life.  Britain  is  altogether  small,  the  mere  tap- 
root of  her  extended  empire;  Scotland,  again,  which 
alone  the  Scottish  boy  adopts  in  his  imagination,  is 
but  a  little  part  of  that,  and  avowedly  cold,  sterile 
and  unpopulous.  It  is  not  so  for  nothing." — 'The 
Foreigner  at  Home/'  Memories  and  Portraits. 


CHILD'S    PLAY  31 

Stevenson's  childhood  is  a  story  of  a  rather  un- 
successful struggle  against  ill  health  with  a  resulting 
growth  of  imaginative  sensitiveness  as  the  boy, 
deprived  of  physical  activity,  turned  his  energy 
inward;  for  nervous  energy  Stevenson  had  to  a 
remarkable  degree.  Moreover  he  had  a  sort  of 
toughness,  born  perhaps  of  this  very  combat  with 
disease,  and  a  buoyancy  of  disposition  that  dispelled 
mental  lassitude  in  the  midst  of  illness.  One  of 
Stevenson's  chief  characteristics,  and  most  impor- 
tant in  understanding  his  philosophy,  was  developed 
early.  As  a  result  of  the  bad  Scotch  weather  and 
his  confinement  to  the  house,  he  learned  to  play  in 
his  mind  as  perhaps  no  perfectly  healthy  child  ever 
learns.  He  was  an  only  child,  and  much  of  his  play 
was  by  himself.  For  this  reason,  perhaps,  his  war 
games  were  more  elaborate,  more  logically  con- 
tinued. His  ship  on  the  stairs,  the  horseman  gal- 
loping by  on  windy  nights  who  haunted  his  imag- 
ination, the  "shadow  march,"  his  hunter's  camp 
behind  the  sofa,  about  all  of  which  you  may  read 
in  A.  Child's  Garden  of  Verses,  were  matters  of 
more  vivid  importance  to  him  than  they  could  have 
been  to  most  children  who  had  constant  outdoor 
activities  to  fill  their  days  with  reality  and  their 
nights  with  sleep. 

"All  round  the  house  is  the  jet-black  night; 

It  stares  through  the  window-pane; 
It  crawls  in  the  corners,  hiding  from  the  light, 

And  it  moves  with  the  moving  flame. 


22  STEVENSON 

"Now  my  little  heart  goes  a-beating  like  a  drum, 
With  the  breath  of  the  Bogie  in  my  hair; 

And  all  round  the  candle  the  crooked  shadows  come, 
And  go  marching  along  up  the  stair. 

"The  shadow  of  the  balusters,  the  shadow  of  the 
lamp, 
The  shadow  of  the  child  that  goes  to  bed — 
All   the  wicked    shadows    coming,    tramp,    tramp, 
tramp, 
With  the  black  night  overhead." 
— "Shadow  March,"  A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses. 

And  behind  the  sofa,  approached  by  the  forest  track 
all  in  the  dark  along  the  wall — 

"There,  in  the  night,  where  none  can  spy, 
All  in  my  hunter's  camp  I  lie, 
And  play  at  books  that  I  have  read 
Till  it  is  time  to  go  to  bed. 

"These  are  the  hills,  these  are  the  woods, 
These  are  my  starry  solitudes; 
And  there  the  river  by  whose  brink 
The  roaring  lions  come  to  drink. 

"I  see  the  others  far  away 
As  if  in  firelit  camp  they  lay, 
And  I,  like  to  an  Indian  scout, 
Around  their  party  prowled  about. 

"So  when  my  nurse  comes  in  for  me, 
Home  I  return  across  the  sea, 
And  go  to  bed  with  backward  looks 
At  my  dear  land  of  Story-books." 
—"The  Land  of  Story-Books,"  A  Child's  Garden 
of  Verses. 


CHILD'S    PLAY  23 

He  has  told  of  all  this  in  a  paper  quoted  by  Mr. 
Balfour  in  his  Life  of  Stevenson;  and  in  many  auto- 
biographical essays  he  has  described  how  he  was 
thus  always  at  play,  living  in  "a  purely  visionary 
state."  No  part  of  his  life  Stevenson  was  fonder 
of  returning  to  and  moralizing  about  than  the  play 
hours  and  story-books  of  childhood.  They  colored 
with  cheerfulness  his  whole  after  experience ;  and  a 
child  who  did  not  know  how  to  invent,  to  play  with 
zest  in  his  own  mind,  he  always  regarded  as  a  pitiful 
and  rather  unhappy  sort  of  creature.  His  wife  tells 
of  his  watching  the  games  of  some  children  at 
Bournemouth,  and  of  his  disgust  at  a  generation 
that  had  forgotten  how  to  play.  "I  see,"  he  ex- 
claimed, "the  approaching  decline  of  England!" 
But,  no  doubt,  as  his  wife  observes,  it  requires  some- 
thing like  genius  to  play  as  Stevenson  played.  It 
requires,  at  least,  a  special  nervous  energy  which  is 
the  chief  part  of  genius,  and  also  it  requires  that 
rare  quality  of  memory  that  sharpens  rather  than 
dulls  interest,  that  makes  memory  a  source  of  inven- 
tion, of  ability  to  vary  and  to  continue.  Obviously 
many  children  have  played  nearly  as  well  as  Steven- 
son. But  have  they  continued  it?  Conventional 
sports  usually  supersede  the  games  of  fancy,  and 
except  for  an  occasional  return  during  some  "pas- 
toral" affair,  the  spirit  of  make-believe  dies  out  and 
is  forgotten  when  we  are  no  more  than  A.  B.'s. 


24  STEVENSON 

III 

Stevenson's  distinction,  and  the  frequent  distinc- 
tion of  genius,  is  shown  in  the  fact  that  he  did  not 
forget,  that  a  very  small  part  of  his  accomplishment 
went  to  waste.  Being  a  thoroughgoing  evolutionist 
in  regard  to  his  own  personality,  he  himself  traces  a 
close  connection  between  his  mature  play,  the  play 
of  his  productive  genius,  and  child's  play.  He  and 
his  cousin  Bob  (R.  A.  M.  Stevenson)  grew  up  from 
the  stage  when  they  ate  buttercups  in  the  back  yard 
as  shipwrecked  sailors,  or  spent  whole  days  in  draw- 
ing maps  to  help  them  find  their  adventurous  way 
across  imaginary  continents  to  the  stage  when  they 
wrote  out  these  tales  for  a  magazine  they  "edited." 
There  were  in  fact  many  of  these  magazines.  Louis's 
interest  in  writing  began  early.  Whether  or  not  his 
dreaming  one  night  at  the  age  of  four  that  he  "heard 
the  noise  of  pens  writing,"  is  a  serious  indication  of 
his  bent,  he  at  least  made  his  debut  at  the  age  of  six 
by  writing  a  History  of  Moses,  dictated  to  his 
mother  on  five  successive  Sunday  evenings,  for 
which  he  received  a  prize  from  his  uncle.  The  next 
year  he  composed  a  History  of  Joseph,  and  alto- 
gether in  the  period  of  boyhood  some  dozen  or  so 
tales,  most  of  them,  however,  not  Biblical  but  of  the 
"Skelt"  variety.  "The  Adventures  of  Jan  van 
Steen,"  in  The  Schoolboy's  Magazine,  other  adven- 
tures in  other  periodicals  famous  for  a  day,  must 
have  been  pretty  racy  reading  if  we  can  judge  by  the 
samples  in  Mr.  Balfour's  Life. 


CHILD'S    PLAY  25 

"Skeltdom,"  to  which  Stevenson  pays  the  homage 
of  genius  in  "A  Penny  Plain,"  was  a  land  of  glam- 
ourous melodrama  which  so  took  hold  of  the  boy's 
imagination  that  it  is  now  impossible  to  say  how 
much  of  Treasure  Island,  Kidnapped,  and  other  such 
tales  we  may  not  owe  to  it.  In  Skeltdom,  for  a 
penny,  the  sickly  boy  was  a  hero  of  romance,  and  if 
he  soon  passed  on  to  the  higher  and  more  spacious 
fields  of  glory  in  Dumas  he  already  bore  some  hon- 
ors with  him. 

"I  have,  at  different  times,  possessed  Aladdin, 
The  Red  Rover,  The  Blind  Boy,  The  Old  Oak 
Chest,  The  Wood  Dcemon,  Jack  Sheppard,  The 
Miller  and  His  Men,  Der  Freischutz,  The  Smuggler, 
The  Forest  of  Bondy,  Robin  Hood,  The  Water- 
man, Richard  I,  My  Poll  and  My  Partner  Joe,  The 
Inchcape  Bell  (imperfect),  and  Three-Fingered 
Jack,  the  Terror  of  Jamaica;  and  I  have  assisted 
others  in  the  illumination  of  The  Maid  of  the  Inn 
and  The  Battle  of  Waterloo.  In  this  roll-call  of 
stirring  names  you  read  the  evidences  of  a  happy 
childhood."  These  pieces  of  literature  he  bought 
for  a  penny  "plain."  "I  cannot  deny,"  he  continues, 
"that  joy  attended  the  illumination ;  nor  can  I  quite 
forgive  that  child  who,  wilfully  foregoing  pleasure, 
stoops  to  'twopence  coloured.'  With  crimson  lake 
(hark  to  the  sound  of  it — crimson  lake! — the  horns 
of  elf  land  are  not  richer  on  the  ear) — with  crim- 
son lake  and  Prussian  blue  a  certain  purple  is  to  be 
compounded   which,    for  cloaks  especially,   Titian 


26  STEVENSON 

could  not  equal.  The  latter  colour  with  gamboge,  a 
hated  name  although  an  exquisite  pigment,  supplied 
a  green  of  such  a  savory  greenness  that  to-day  my 
heart  regrets  it.  Nor  can  I  recall  without  a  tender 
weakness  the  very  aspect  of  the  water  where  I 
clipped  my  brush.  Yes,  there  was  pleasure  in  the 
painting.  But  when  all  was  painted,  it  is  needless 
to  deny  it,  all  was  spoiled." — "A  Penny  Plain  and 
Twopence  Coloured,"  Memories  and  Portraits. 

The  psychology  of  "Child's  Play"  Stevenson  has 
described  in  an  essay  of  that  title.  It  is  art  for  art's 
sake;  that  is  the  gist  of  it.  In  Stevenson's  case  the 
imagination  of  the  man,  the  useful  and  romantic 
imagination,  is  clearly  suggested  in  what  he  has  told 
us  of  his  infancy.  "An  author  must  live  in  a  book 
as  a  child  in  a  game  oblivious  to  the  world."  In  "A 
Penny  Plain,"  "A  Novel  of  Dumas's,"  "A  Gossip 
on  Romance,"  "Child's  Play,"  "A  Chapter  on 
Dreams,"  "Rosa  Quo  Locorum,"  and  here  and  there 
casually  in  many  other  essays,  exists  the  testimony 
of  the  author  to  this  relationship  of  his  early  sensi- 
tiveness of  imagination  to  his  later  purposes  as  an 
artist.  Fascinated  by  the  sound  of  the  language, 
by  the  reading  aloud  of  his  mother  and  his  nurse, 
by  the  recitations  of  his  Aunt  Jane,  associating,  for 
example,  all  such  phrases  as  "Death's  dark  vale" 
and  "pastures  green,"  which  he  read  in  a  graphic 
version  of  the  Psalms,  with  definite  places  in  Edin- 
burgh, he  grew  early  to  have  that  temperament  for 
words  which  is  one  of  the  determining  features  of 


CHILD'S   PLAY  27 

his  style-  He  remembers  vividly  his  first  great  inter- 
est in  Rob  Roy,  and  records  that  such  phrases  as 
"the  worthy  Doctor  Light  foot" — "mistrysted  with 
a  bogle" — "a  wheen  green  trash" — "Jenny,  lass,  I 
think  I  ha'e  her" — were  henceforth  part  of  his  dia- 
lect. It  is  also  in  "Rosa  Quo  Locorum"  that  he  tells 
about  his  discovery  of  reading.  He  had  been  play- 
ing all  day,  and  toward  evening  being  sent  on  an 
errand  to  the  village,  he  took  along  a  book  of  fairy 
tales.  Going  down  through  a  firwood  in  the  mag- 
nificent sunset  light  and  reading  as  he  walked,  he 
experienced  a  sudden  great  shock  of  pleasure  the 
recollection  of  which  never  left  him  and  for  the 
rest  of  his  life  touched  the  mere  process  of  explor- 
ing a  book  with  romance. 

The  remarkable  thing  is  not  that  Stevenson  had 
these  experiences,  which  I  believe  are  the  common 
experiences  of  imaginative  children,  but  that  Ste- 
venson continued  all  his  life  to  be  thus  sensitive,  and 
especially  that  he  kept  up  a  sensational  memory  of 
the  past.  He  says  somewhere  that  he  is  one  of  the 
few  people  who  really  remembers  his  past.  The 
more  one  knows  about  men  of  artistic  genius,  the 
more  one  realizes  that  this  kind  of  memory  is  an 
economic  condition  of  such  genius,  and  often  an 
explanation  of  it.  In  the  minds  of  the  artists  there 
are  few  waste  sensations.  In  the  productions  of 
genius  everything  has  counted.  Writing  at  the  end 
of  his  life  in  Samoa,  he  gives  us  a  picture  of  his 
childhood  in  Edinburgh,  which  in  this  connection 
it  will  pay  the  reader  to  look  at.    It  is  quoted  at  the 


28  STEVENSON 

end  of  the  third  chapter  in  Balfour's  Life.  It  is 
not  a  description  of  Edinburgh;  it  is  in  reality  a 
picture  of  his  mind,  of  his  vivid  memory  of  "inar- 
ticulate but  profound  impressions,"  as  he  walked 
with  his  nurse  "gaping  on  the  universe." 


IV 


There  was,  as  might  be  expected,  another  side  to 
this  unusual  sensitiveness  of  imagination.  Very 
early  he  developed  his  extraordinary  capacity  for 
suffering — suffering  which  was,  however,  positive 
and  creative.  It  was  part  of  Stevenson's  equipment 
for  close  contact  with  life.  In  his  grave  illnesses  as  a 
child,  the  feverish  hours  of  waiting  for  dawn  which 
he  describes  to  us  are  the  beginnings  of  a  kind  of 
imaginative  introspection  that  later  marks  his  ge- 
nius. The  author  of  The  Merry  Men,  Dr.  Jekyll 
and  Mr.  Hyde,  "Thrawn  Janet,"  "The  Isle  of 
Voices,"  and  of  those  peculiarly  imagined  terror- 
scenes  in  The  Master,  "The  Beach  of  Falesa,"  "The 
Pavilion  on  the  Links,"  is  the  dreamer  of  strange 
childish  nightmares,  and  later  on,  of  sleep-fantasies, 
that  so  often  appear  to  have  a  reasoned  moral.  In 
his  "Chapter  on  Dreams,"  Stevenson  has  described 
the  effects  of  illness  on  his  early  imagination,  effects 
which  seem  to  have  been  aggravated  by  the  sto- 
ries of  his  beloved  nurse,  Alison  Cunningham. 
"Cummy,"  unaware  how  far  a  child's  imagination 
even  in  health  will  carry  the  dogmas  of  Calvinistic 
hell-fire  theology,  used  to  give  him  the  benefit  of  her 


CHILD'S    PLAY  29 

own  cheerful  religious  views,  and  Louis  did  not  dare 
to  go  to  sleep  for  fear  of  waking  in  the  flames  of  the 
underworld.  In  the  morning  he  would  be  feverish 
and  ill. 

And  yet  Stevenson  would  not  have  given  up  these 
things.  Which  of  us,  in  fact,  does  not  look  back  on 
such  experiences  as  the  better  and  romantic  part  of 
life?  Anything  in  order  to  have  felt!  Reality  is 
only  what  we  experience  now.  It  is  wholly  circum- 
scribed. The  past,  like  the  future,  is  a  dream,  and 
capable  of  infinite  expansion.  It  transcends  fact 
or  truth  and  becomes  a  widening  field  of  adventure. 

"The  past,"  Stevenson  argued,  "is  all  of  one  tex- 
ture— whether  feigned  or  suffered."  One  recollec- 
tion may  be  vivid,  another  may  be  dull,  but  which  is 
true  and  which  merely  a  dream  there  is  "not  one 
hair  to  prove."  What  does  our  past  then  amount  to? 
Would  we  not  be  just  the  same  Smith  or  Robinson 
were  it  truth  or  dream?  A  metaphysician  might 
argue  it  away  entirely.  But  though  fancy  and  fact, 
a  few  years  gone,  are  so  much  alike  as  to  be  indis- 
tinguishable, imagine  us  robbed  of  these  "air-painted 
pictures,"  this  romance  of  memory  which  we  call 
our  past — how  circumscribed  would  be  our  outlook ! 
Without  a  romantic  picture  of  our  past  in  the  back 
of  our  brains,  could  there  be  any  romantic  vision  of 
the  future  before  our  eyes  ?  Dreams  and  memories 
— they  extend  the  lives  of  those  who  cultivate  them 
beyond  the  lives  of  their  more  practical  minded 
neighbors  and,  as  I  say,  make  a  field  of  ever  fresh 
experience. 


30  STEVENSON 

Stevenson,  the  evolutionist,  definitely  connects 
this  kind  of  dreaming  with  the  growth  of  his  ge- 
nius; and  for  any  theory  of  genius,  as  energy  cre- 
ated by  subconscious  activity,  which  is  a  theory 
that  at  least  accounts  for  the  rapid  processes  and 
apparently  miraculous  intuitions  of  certain  men  of 
genius,  dreaming  might  well  furnish  some  minor 
evidence.  There  is,  I  believe,  a  set  of  Indian  mys- 
tics who  never  sleep,  at  least  not  the  ordinary  dark 
sleep  of  normal  men;  they  have  trained  their  brains 
to  continue  at  night  certain  practical  and  profitable 
subconscious  processes,  and  the  condition  of  the 
body  meanwhile  they  call  "white  sleep."  Steven- 
son's imagination  was  to  some  extent  given  its  cast 
by  similar  experiments. 

Stevenson  says  that  he  was  ever  an  ardent  and 
uncomfortable  dreamer.  While  he  was  a  student 
in  Edinburgh,  he  explains  in  this  "Chapter  on 
Dreams,"  he  began  to  dream  a  story  from  night 
to  night;  and  so  persistent  was  this  subconscious 
streak  that  it  made  a  kind  of  double  life  for  him 
and  began  to  produce  a  mild  form  of  mental  confu- 
sion. In  some  alarm  he  visited  a  physician,  who 
easily  dispelled  the  trouble  by  "a  simple  draught." 
But  in  this  incident  one  can  see  the  future  imag- 
iner  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde;  and  though  Ste- 
venson says  here  that  he  never  had  another  such 
experience  as  this,  he  records  later  that  Dr.  Jekyll 
and  Mr.  Hyde  was  itself  a  dream,  and  that  "Olalla" 
was  mostly  a  dream.     In  this  same  "Chapter  on 


CHILD'S    PLAY  31 

Dreams"  he  goes  on  to  say  that  he  had  long  been 
in  the  custom  of  putting  himself  to  sleep  with  tales, 
as  his  father  before  him,  "tales  where  a  thread  might 
be  dropped,  or  one  adventure  quitted  for  another, 
on  fancy's  least  suggestion." 

Stevenson  calls  the  sprites  of  imagination  who 
guide  a  man's  fancies  during  sleep  or  waking  "the 
Little  People."  At  first  they  played  upon  their 
stage  like  children,  rather  irresponsibly,  not  like 
drilled  actors.  But  presently  he  began  to  turn  this 
amusement  of  dreaming  and  story-telling  to  account ; 
he  began  to  write  and  sell  his  tales.  This  made  a 
new  business  for  the  Little  People.  The  stories  had 
now  to  be  "trimmed  and  pared,"  and  to  fit  with 
the  laws  of  life.  But  the  Little  People  understood 
the  change  as  well  as  he.  When  he  began  to  dream 
it  was  not  an  aimless  adventure  he  embarked  on, 
but  something  that  could  be  turned  to  account ;  and 
after  he  had,  so  to  speak,  given  over  the  direction 
of  the  affair,  the  Little  People  continued  it.  When 
his  bank-account  ran  low,  when  he  set  to  stirring 
his  brains  for  a  plot,  the  Little  People  at  once  began 
to  experiment  upon  their  midnight  stage.  Who  are 
the  Little  People,  the  sprites  of  imagination?  Ste- 
venson says  they  are  beyond  doubt  near  connections 
of  the  dreamer.  Perhaps  they  are  creations  of 
financial  worry!  No,  they  are  even  closer  to  him 
than  this.  They  are  creations  of  his  training  and 
perhaps  have  more  talent  than  he.  "One  thing  is 
beyond  doubt,  they  can  tell  him  a  story  piece  by 


32  STEVENSON 

piece,  like  a  serial,  and  keep  him  all  the  while  in 
ignorance  of  where  they  aim." 

These  passages  are  a  humorous  commentary  both 
on  much  that  is  charming  and  not  a  little  that  is 
futile  in  Stevenson's  literary  method.  The  Little 
People  were  not  always  the  best  hands  to  help  him 
arrange  a  long  and  complicated  matter.  They  often 
played  him  tricks  and  deserted  him.  If  Treasure 
Island,  The  Merry  Men,  "The  Isle  of  Voices,"  are 
the  works  of  the  Little  People,  The  Black  Arrow 
is  a  result  of  their  desertion,  "Olalla"  is  one  of  their 
complete  failures,  and  one  suspects  that  the  blind 
alleys  in  nearly  all  Stevenson's  longer  books  are 
places  of  their  perverse  invention.  Still,  his  con- 
tinued reliance  on  them  rather  than  on  any  more 
prosaic  creatures  has  given  us  those  fancies  which 
we  most  delight  in.  Their  faults  and  their  virtues 
are  complementary. 

From  this  description  of  the  sources,  out  of  his 
childhood,  of  some  traits  of  Stevenson's  peculiar 
genius,  it  must  not  be  thought  that  he  was  growing 
up  merely  a  fantastic  dreamer  and  player  of  games. 
The  experiences  here  described  colored  his  imag- 
ination and  to  a  great  extent  determined  his  taste, 
but  they  did  not  distort  his  mind.  They  added  to 
the  charm  and  originality  of  his  creative  fancy  all 
through  his  life.  As  we  shall  see,  Stevenson  was 
one  of  those  fortunate  men  who  contrive  to  make 
all  their  experience  count,  and  to  utilize  it  thor- 
oughly. He  grew  up  to  the  age  of  school  and  col- 
lege full  of  the  zest  for  experiment,  and  his  char- 


CHILD'S    PLAY  33 

acter  might  be  described  at  this  time,  as  well  as  the 
quality  of  his  genius,  by  adding  that  where  he  did 
not  come  by  knowledge  naturally  he  secured  it  by 
sheer  invention. 


CHAPTER  III 


LITERATURE  AND  THE   FAMILY   PROFESSION 


OUTWARDLY,  Stevenson's  life  from  1859, 
when  he  began  a  rather  irregular  schooling, 
to  1875,  when,  after  giving  up  all  idea  of  following 
the  family  profession,  he  had  studied  law  and  had 
been  admitted  to  the  bar,  was  in  accordance  with  the 
ideas  of  a  practical,  hard-headed  Scotch  father,  who 
believed  in  fitting  every  man  for  a  definite  career. 
As  a  boy  Stevenson  attended  three  different  schools 
in  Edinburgh  and  read  under  various  tutors.  He 
had  been  once,  for  a  month,  at  Hamburg,  near 
Frankfurt;  two  winters  with  his  mother  on  the 
Italian  Riviera  at  Mentone,  in  1862  and  1863;  and 
the  two  springs  of  1864  and  1865  at  Torquay.  In 
Scotland  he  spent  his  frequent  vacations  at  Colin- 
ton,  North  Berwick,  or  with  his  father  on  lighthouse 
service.  Entering  Edinburgh  University  in  1867, 
he  began  a  regular  course  of  scientific  studies  calcu- 
lated to  prepare  him  for  engineering.  In  1871  he 
read  before  the  Royal  Scottish  Society  of  Arts  a 
paper  on  "A  New  Form  of  Intermittent  Light  for 

34 


THE    FAMILY    PROFESSION  35 

Light  Houses."  Then,  twelve  days  later,  he  told 
his  father  that  he  did  not  wish  to  continue  in  scien- 
tific work.  What  he  wished  to  do  was  what  he  had 
been  working  at  in  earnest  all  the  time  his  normal 
education  had  proceeded.    He  wished  to  be  a  writer. 

If  we  examine  those  essays  which  contain  Steven- 
son's memories  of  school  and  college  days  it  is  evi- 
dent that  his  chief  interest  was  all  along  to  learn  the 
art  of  writing,  his  ambition  to  publish.  These  essays 
may  be  divided  into  three  sets :  a  few  dealing  with 
his  experience  in  and  about  Edinburgh,  such  as 
"Lantern  Bearers,"  "Old  Mortality,"  "The  Char- 
acter of  Dogs,"  "Pastoral,"  "An  Old  Scotch  Gar- 
dener," "A  Winter's  Walk";  a  few  more  showing 
what  his  interest  in  the  family  profession  really  was, 
such  as  "A  Family  of  Engineers,"  "Memoirs  of  an 
Islet,"  "The  Education  of  an  Engineer" ;  and  finally 
several  essays  describing  or  analyzing  his  private 
ambition  and  his  methods  of  learning  to  write,  which 
I  shall  discuss  in  the  next  chapters. 

In  the  first  set  you  perceive  the  artist's  strong  and 
natural  delight  in  all  his  experiences,  with  many 
evidences  of  what  Stevenson  called  his  "consistent 
egotism."  You  will  see  that  the  zest  for  play  and 
make-believe  described  in  "Lantern  Bearers,"  that 
wonderful  defense  of  the  romantic  purposelessness 
of  youth,  widens  into  an  appreciation  of  all  serious 
artistic  material  as  the  only  true  material  for  play. 
Play  is  making  new  experiences  out  of  the  usual, 
thinking  about  things  imaginatively,  enlarging  them 
into  new  values,  getting  more  out  of  life"  than  mere 


36  STEVENSON 

money's  worth.  It  seems,  as  I  look  at  the  set  of 
Stevenson's  works  on  the  shelf  behind  me  and  real- 
ize what  they  stand  for,  that  every  vivid  experience 
which  Stevenson  had  at  this  age  must  have  so  occu- 
pied his  imagination  afterward,  have  furnished  him 
so  much  material  for  play,  that  he  was  forced  to 
explain  it  to  others  with  somewhat  the  same  de- 
light as  any  of  us  explains  the  games  of  our  child- 
hood twenty  years  later.  And  there  is  about  these 
essays  much  the  same  combination  of  spontaneity 
and  artificiality  that  one  finds  in  the  games  of  youth. 
For  playing  with  an  idea  is  the  secret  or  open  mo- 
tive of  many  of  Stevenson's  writings.  Play,  mere 
play,  sets  his  mind  free ;  it  involves  all  his  resources. 
Upon  the  function  of  play  in  life  and  in  art  you 
may  read  very  learned  disquisitions,  like  the  Es- 
thetic Letters  of  Schiller,  but  the  gist  of  the  whole 
thing,  or  at  least  its  happiest  symbol,  is  perhaps  Ste- 
venson's account  of  his  bull's-eye  lantern.  It  may 
well  be  taken  as  a  symbol  for  the  fundamental  thing 
in  his  own  character — the  early  development  of 
which  we  have  just  noticed — his  artistic  ability  to 
play.  The  smoky,  reeking,  tin  contrivances  which 
the  small  boys  of  Colinton  carried  under  their  top- 
coats on  autumn  nights,  solely  for  the  "joy"  of  the 
thing,  serves  him  late  in  life  for  an  emblem  of  his 
whole  poetic  purpose.  Art  is  not  opposed  to  utility, 
and  play  is  not  opposed  to  utility.  But  neither  is 
to  be  judged  by  it.  The  poetry  of  life  is  eminently 
useful,  but  utility  is  neither  its  purpose  nor  its  sanc- 
tion.   "Who  misses  the  joy  misses  all."   This  is  as 


THE   FAMILY    PROFESSION  37 

true  of  life  as  of  poetry,  which  ought  to  be  the  es- 
sence of  life.  Utility  is  not  the  essence  of  life. 
Realism  is  not  the  essence  of  art.  Of  each  the  es- 
sence lies  in  imaginative  beauty. 

This  is  the  vital  and  poetic  strain  in  Stevenson's 
mind.  For  whatever  else  he  was  or  failed  to  be,  he 
was  fundamentally  poetic.  In  this  essay  on  the  art 
of  the  lantern  he  is  directing  his  criticism  against 
the  school  of  realists ;  but  when  all  is  said,  his  com- 
plaint of  them  is  not  that  they  fail  to  touch  the  joy 
of  romance,  but  that  they  failed  to  touch  realism 
with  poetry.  This  is  what  Stevenson  means  by  his 
doctrine  of  play.  Many  have  dealt  more  sharply 
than  he  with  reality,  but  few  have  played  with  it  so 
well.  Few  have  so  frequently  called  in  the  Little 
People  to  bear  a  hand. 

For  an  example,  and  a  right  homely  one,  let  Ste- 
venson once  feel  the  glamour  of  Scotch  moors  and 
the  Scotchman's  intense  love  of  them,  let  him  de- 
cide that  the  sheep  business  is  the  typical  Scotch 
pursuit,  let  him  catch  the  image  of  the  old  shepherd, 
John  Todd,  to  give  the  idea  form  and  make  it 
live,  and  he  has  the  outline  of  the  game.  With  the 
aid  of  the  Little  People  he  can  write  his  essay  called 
"Pastoral."  What  he  saw  many  a  realist  has  seen, 
and  perhaps  has  felt  what  he  felt;  we  may  our- 
selves come  from  a  race  of  shepherds  and  know  the 
whole  business  from  A  to  Z;  but  are  John  Todd 
and  his  sheep  matters  to  our  hand  ?  No,  the  Little 
People  are  lacking,  or  the  chances  are  that  we  at 
once  put  them  to  rout.    Not  so  with  Stevenson.    He 


38  STEVENSON 

invites  them  in  and  what  they  bring  him  is  a  height- 
ened vividness  which  is  beyond  realism. 

"We  have  not  so  far  to  climb  to  come  to  shep- 
herds," he  says  at  the  end  of  this  essay;  "and  it  may 
be  I  had  one  for  an  ascendant  who  has  largely 
moulded  me.  But  yet  I  think  I  owe  my  taste  for 
that  hillside  business  rather  to  the  art  and  interest 
of  John  Todd.  He  it  was  that  made  it  live  for  me, 
as  the  artist  can  make  all  things  live.  It  was  through 
him  the  simple  strategy  of  massing  sheep  upon  a 
snowy  evening,  with  its  attendant  scampering  of 
earnest,  shaggy  aides-de-camp,  was  an  affair  that 
I  never  wearied  of  seeing,  and  that  I  never  weary 
of  recalling  to  mind :  the  shadow  of  the  night  dark- 
ening on  the  hills,  inscrutable  black  dots  of  snow- 
shower  moving  here  and  there  like  night  already 
come,  huddles  of  yellow  sheep  and  dartings  of  black 
dogs  upon  the  snow,  a  bitter  air  that  took  you  by 
the  throat,  unearthly  harpings  of  the  wind  along 
the  moors ;  and  for  centerpiece  to  all  these  features 
and  influences,  John  winding  up  the  brae,  keeping 
his  captain's  eye  upon  all  sides,  and  breaking,  ever 
and  again,  into  a  spasm  of  bellowing  that  seemed 
to  make  the  evening  bleaker.  It  is  thus  that  I  still 
see  him  in  my  mind's  eye,  perched  on  a  hump  of 
the  declivity  not  far  from  Halkerside,  his  staff  in 
airy  flourish,  his  great  voice  taking  hold  upon  the 
hills  and  echoing  terror  to  the  lowlands;  I,  mean- 
while, standing  somewhat  back,  until  the  fit  should 


THE    FAMILY    PROFESSION  39 

be  over,  and,  with  a  pinch  of  snuff,  my  friend  re- 
lapse into  his  easy,  even  conversion." — "Pastoral," 
Memories  and  Portraits. 

This  was  a  sensation  to  start  the  fancy  of  youth — 
one  of  the  unforgettable  commonplaces  for  those 
who  have  seen  it. 

In  these  essays  Stevenson  has  the  methods  of  the 
romantic  poet.  He  is  expressing  his  own  feelings 
and  his  own  specific  experience.  He  is  part  of  the 
scene,  never  impersonal.  He  gives  shape  to  an  idea 
not  by  working  his  way  through  it  systematically, 
but  by  tossing  it  about  in  his  game  of  phrases  and 
images  till  you  have  seen  what  it  is  like  in  his  mind. 
In  "Old  Mortality,"  his  own  experience,  as  nearly 
always,  serves  as  a  starting  point ;  so  that  this  little 
philosophy  for  greensick  youth  is  not  a  set  topic,  a 
writer's  theme,  but  something  springing  naturally 
from  Stevenson's  interest  in  his  own  character.  The 
fun  of  reading  the  essay  is  like  the  fun  of  personal 
talk.  It  continues,  by  a  series  of  suggestions,  not 
by  a  prearranged  plan  pointing  to  a  foreseen  goal. 
At  the  end  you  have  not  the  satisfaction  of  arriving; 
only  the  pleasure  of  the  author's  companionship  and 
of  the  incidents  on  the  way.  This  is  the  spirit  of 
play  as  distinguished  from  that  of  business.  The 
spirit  of  business  is  to  arrive,  to  finish,  to  settle 
things — a  spirit  in  which  most  writing  is  under- 
taken and  completed.  The  spirit  of  play  is  the  charm 
of  lyric  poetry,  and  Stevenson's  essays  about  his 


40  STEVENSON 

early  experiences  have  both  in  their  origin  and 
method  much  that  is  fundamentally  poetic  because 
they  are  so  intimate  and  so  personal. 


II 


Let  me  ask  the  reader  a  question:  Have  you 
thought  what  it  is  like  to  be  a  poet?  Why  are  you 
not  a  poet  ?  You  are  thoroughly  interested  in  your 
own  experiences;  you  are  very  likely  egotistical 
enough.  Why  does  your  egotism  not  inspire  you? 
Why  does  the  world  not  stir  it  for  you  until  it  brims 
over?  You  have  sat  in  graveyards,  and  you  have 
seen  sheep  herded.  Yet  you  are  not  Thomas  Gray 
nor  Robert  Louis  Stevenson.  Is  it  feelings  that  you 
lack,  and  words?  Or  is  it  the  energy  to  make  a 
play  out  of  what  impressions  you  receive?  "It  is 
said,"  remarks  Stevenson,  "that  a  poet  has  died 
young  in  the  breast  of  the  most  stolid."  There  are 
of  course  thousands  of  sensitive  mortals  with  nerves 
responding  to  all  impressions,  who  are  the  constant 
reservoirs  of  poetic  feeling  without  being  able  to  care 
for  the  forms  of  play  that  it  suggests.  They  try  to 
make  these  impressions  vivid  neither  in  conversa- 
tion, nor  in  music,  nor  in  pictures,  nor  in  writing. 
But  if  you  will  begin  to  do  any  one  of  these  things 
and  carry  it  beyond  what  may  be  called  an  inventory 
of  fact,  you  have  some  idea  of  the  energy  required 
for  artistic  play. 

Such  energy  was  Stevenson's;  and  so  far  as  we 
are  immediately  concerned  here,  this  spirit  of  play 


THE    FAMILY    PROFESSION  41 

explains  the  turn  of  his  life  during  school  and  col- 
lege. It  explains  his  motives  in  choosing  a  career. 
He  has,  at  first,  no  purpose  as  a  writer  except  this 
purpose  to  play,  to  use  his  imagination  about  his 
various  experiences  and  impressions.  Neither  does 
he  seem  to  have  special  or  favorite  subject-matter 
which  he  takes  to  for  its  own  sake.  A  thing  inter- 
ests him  chiefly  because  he  had  a  part  in  it.  Hence, 
to  have  experiences  of  all  sorts,  to  know  life  in 
varying  detail,  to  watch  John  Todd  herd  his  sheep 
or  to  go  down  in  a  diving-bell,  is  more  significant 
to  him  than  to  become  himself  a  professional  sheep- 
farmer  or  a  trained  engineer.  To  the  poet  the  sig- 
nificant thing  in  life  is  the  sequence  of  his  own 
changing  impressions;  it  could  not  be  the  routine 
of  a  business. 

That  such  instinctive  considerations  were  at  the 
bottom  of  Stevenson's  choice  of  literature  as  a  ca- 
reer, instead  of  engineering  or  law,  is  obvious  from 
the  character  of  his  writings  which  deal  with  the 
period  of  his  youth,  and  nowhere  more  so  than  in 
those  topics  connected  with  the  family  profession. 
Thomas  Stevenson,  as  you  learn  in  his  son's  trib- 
ute, was  devoted  to  his  career  of  engineer  as  a  ser- 
vice to  the  nation.  He  never,  for  example,  took 
out  a  patent  on  any  of  his  inventions,  regarding 
them  as  the  property  of  the  nation.  The  profession 
had  come  down  in  the  family  from  his  grandfather, 
Thomas  Smith,  first  engineer  to  the  Board  of  North- 
ern Lights,  and  Thomas  Stevenson  was  the  fifth 
member  of  the  family  to  be  engaged  in  it.   There- 


42  STEVENSON 

fore  to  discover  that  his  son  Louis's  youthful  inter- 
est in  the  profession  was  really  a  romantic  and 
literary  interest,  or  only  an  exhibition  of  good  will, 
instead  of  serious  scientific  purpose,  was  a  bitter 
experience  to  him.  Louis  had  been  with  him  on 
various  cruises ;  he  had  shown  a  level  head,  though 
not  very  steady  nerves,  in  various  difficult  situa- 
tions; he  had  done  fairly  well  in  the  scientific 
courses  at  the  university.  The  family  still  hoped  that 
his  frail  health  might  improve.  But  Louis  in  his 
twenty-first  year  had  made  up  his  mind  not  to  ex- 
periment further  with  an  alien  taste  and  a  doubtful 
practicality.  Thomas  Stevenson  resigned  himself 
to  the  situation.  He  stipulated,  however,  that  Louis 
should  be  fitted  for  the  law  in  order  to  have  a  pro- 
fession to  fall  back  on,  if  literature,  as  he  thor- 
oughly expected,  proved  an  inadequate  support. 
Louis  could  not  refuse  acquiescence  in  this;  and,  as 
it  turned  out,  though  he  never  practised  law,  he  was 
also  never  properly  self-supporting  by  means  of  his 
pen  till  his  father's  death.  His  health,  however, 
would  have  made  law  or  literature  equally  impossi- 
ble had  he  desired  to  follow  it  in  Scotland. 

In  those  essays  called  "The  Coast  of  Fife,"  "The 
Education  of  an  Engineer,"  "Memoirs  of  an  Islet," 
"A  Family  of  Engineers,"  you  may  readily  perceive 
what  kind  of  appeal  the  family  profession  had  for 
Stevenson.  It  attracted  him  in  its  aspects  of  adven- 
ture and  danger  and  as  the  romantic  inheritance  of 
the  family.  It  attracted  him  as  literary  material. 
But  it  had  no  practical  hold  on  him.    Neither  had 


THE    FAMILY    PROFESSION  43 

he  any  practical  aptitude  for  it,  only  a  certain  theo- 
retical liking. 

Concerning  a  visit  to  Anstruther,  where  he  went 
in  July,  1868,  to  glean  engineering  experience  from 
watching  his  father's  workmen  build  a  breakwater, 
he  has  left  a  record  in  the  essay  called  "The  Educa- 
tion of  an  Engineer.' '  He  confesses  frankly  that 
the  details  of  construction  interested  him  solely  as 
material  for  a  romance.  Such  things  as  rubble,  pol- 
ished ashlar,  pierres  perdues,  the  string  course,  were 
merely  expansions  of  his  vocabulary  and  went  along 
with  the  sunshine,  the  sea-air,  the  waves,  "the  green 
glimmer  of  the  divers'  helmets  far  below,"  into  his 
romantic  dream,  not  into  his  practical  mind.  His 
real  labors  were  not  on  the  breakwater  with  the 
masons,  but  after  dinner  in  his  chamber  where  he 
poured  forth  "literature"— Voces  Fidelium  and  dra- 
matic monologues  in  verse  "at  a  terrific  speed, 
spurred  on  by  intimations  of  early  death  and  im- 
mortality." 

Another  engineering  experience  the  next  month 
at  Wick  seems  to  have  consisted  chiefly  in  a  descent 
in  a  diving-bell,  which  was  the  real  source  of  this 
document  in  romanticism  about  which  I  have  just 
spoken.  Its  title  ("The  Education  of  an  Engineer") 
should  really  be  "The  Education  of  a  Writer."  An- 
other memory  of  these  days  begins  as   follows : 

"Those  who  try  to  be  artists  use,  time  after  time, 
the  matter  of  their  recollections,  setting  and  reset- 
ting little  coloured  memories  of  men  and  scenes, 


44  STEVENSON 

rigging  up  (it  may  be)  some  especial  friend  in  the 
attire  of  a  buccaneer,  and  decreeing  armies  to  ma- 
neuver, or  murder  to  be  done,  on  the  playground  of 
their  youth.  But  the  memories  are  a  fairy  gift 
which  cannot  be  worn  out  in  using."  This  paper 
entitled  "Memoirs  of  an  Islet"  goes  on  to  say 
that  these  places  where  he  went  to  observe  his  fa- 
ther's operations  proved  useful  to  him  for  the  sce- 
nery and  the  characters  of  his  tales.  "There  is  an- 
other isle  in  my  collection,  the  memory  of  which 
besieges  me.  I  put  a  whole  family  there,  in  one  of 
my  tales;  and  later  on,  threw  upon  its  shores,  and 
condemned  to  several  days  of  rain  and  shell-fish  on 
its  tumbled  boulders,  the  hero  of  another.  The  ink 
is  not  yet  faded;  the  sound  of  the  sentences  is  still 
in  my  mind's  ear;  and  I  am  under  a  spell  to  write 
of  that  island  again." — "Memoirs  of  an  Islet," 
Memories  and  Portraits. 

In  many  things  at  this  period  Stevenson  thus 
found  his  true  interest  in  life  to  be  heretical  and, 
from  his  father's  point  of  view,  wasteful.  But  for 
genius  everything  counts ;  which,  by  the  way,  is  also 
an  explanation  of  why  genius  is  rare.  Truancy, 
idleness,  dreaming,  often  as  much  as  labor  or  atten- 
tion to  a  definite  business  in  hand,  play  their  part ; 
for,  in  the  mind  of  genius,  the  unity  of  things  is 
more  comprehensive  than  in  the  mind  of  practical- 
ity. What  seems  waste  turns  out  or  is  made  to  be 
economy.  What  seems  like  a  serious  set-back  finally 
appears  as  a  decisive  step  in  advance.     Life,  for 


THE   FAMILY    PROFESSION  45 

the  strong  and  original  men,  is  nearly  always  thus 
consistent.  In  their  wills  are  few  false  intentions, 
and  in  their  environment  few  blind  alleys. 

In  1871,  when  Stevenson  declared  against  the 
family  profession,  he  knew  that  his  real  education 
had  all  along  been  different  from  that  planned  by  his 
father.  His  real  education  had  led  him  to  a  com- 
plete faith  in  his  desire  to  be  a  writer  and  to  the 
belief  that  his  subject-matter  would  be  only  his  own 
experience  with  the  world.  As  we  see  it  now,  his 
life  was  reasonable;  for  what  he  became  is  precisely 
what  one  would  expect  of  a  man  whose  mind  had 
been  formed  in  boyhood  in  such  peculiar  fashion 
as  has  been  described.  Genius  is  logical;  the  sur- 
prise would  have  been  R.  L.  S.  as  a  successful  civil 
engineer. 


Ill 


There  are,  in  this  matter  of  Stevenson's  deter- 
mination to  be  a  writer  in  opposition  to  his  father's 
plans  and  wishes,  further  circumstances  which  color 
his  whole  life,  and  therefore  greatly  affect  the  char- 
acter of  his  literary  production.  It  is  a  matter  he 
gave  much  thought  to  later  on.  One  can  not  read 
far  in  Stevenson  without  being  struck  by  his  fre- 
quent choice  of  the  divergent  views  of  father  and 
son,  of  age  and  youth,  both  for  analysis  in  an  essay 
and  for  motive  in  a  story.  In  Virginibus  Puer- 
isque,  "Crabbed  Age  and  Youth,"  and  here  and 
there  throughout  his  papers,  he  is  pointing  out  the 


46  STEVENSON 

characteristic  attitudes  of  the  older  and  younger 
generations.  Youth  is  full  of  romance,  experiment, 
socialism,  vagabondage,  flaunting  energy,  passing 
brilliances;  age  is  full  of  the  enjoyment  of  safe 
knowledge.  This  is  the  gist  of  his  doctrine  repeated 
over  and  over.  The  father  and  son  motive  was  to 
form  the  backbone  of  Weir  of  Hermiston,  where 
it  is  heavy  and  tragic  in  significance;  it  was  to  be 
lightly  presented  in  The  Wrecker,  very  dully  in 
"The  Misadventures  of  John  Nicholson,'*  and  very 
trivially  in  "The  Story  of  a  Lie."  But  all  these 
cases,  and  several  others,  reflect  something  of  Ste- 
venson's own  attitude. 

His  relationship  with  his  father  is  a  central  fact 
in  his  career,  and  to  see  Stevenson  clearly  we  must 
see  the  rather  vague,  wildish  youth  and  the  serious, 
definite  man  together  in  contrast.  "Imagine,"  says 
Stevenson  somewhere,  "a  young  man  who  shall  have 
grown  up  in  an  old  and  rigid  circle,  following  by- 
gone fashions  and  taught  to  distrust  his  own  fresh 
instincts."  Against  the  solid  dark-browed  figure  of 
Thomas  Stevenson,  with  the  dignity  of  his  position, 
his  inheritance  and  personal  accomplishment,  Louis 
appears  all  through  his  school  and  college  days  a 
good  deal  of  the  flibbertigibbet,  a  fascinating  young 
witch  of  a  boy,  a  wild  and  truant  stripling  full  of 
ingenious  practical  jokes,  and  again  a  strange,  awk- 
ward, yet  tunefully  voiced  and  gently  mannered, 
poet,  who  flashes  up  into  fiery  seriousness  about  reli- 
gion or  socialism,  and  who  always  vibrates  with  an 
impermanent  nervous  energy.     'But  this  energy, 


THE   FAMILY   PROFESSION  47 

which  expressed  him  then,  was  to  grow  later  into 
a  strong  intellectual  force.  This  is  a  thing  the  eyes 
of  few  parents  can  foresee,  especially  if  they  wish 
to  educate  the  safe  side  of  their  child's  character. 
Or,  it  may  be,  that  realizing  instinctively  the  im- 
portance of  the  other  side,  they  believe  that  will 
strengthen  itself  all  the  more  soundly  for  a  little 
opposition.  Stevenson  spent  his  youth — and  what 
boy  of  imagination  has  not? — under  the  darkening, 
yet  kindly,  eye  of  his  father's  counsel.  The  stern- 
ness of  Thomas  Stevenson's  character  corresponded 
with  the  sternness  of  the  family  profession;  and  the 
romantic  element  in  Louis's  view  of  it  no  doubt 
seemed  trivial  to  the  older  man.  To  his  father  he 
often  appeared,  as  he  doubtless  was,  flippant  and 
prone  to  exaggerate  his  own  conceit.  Later  on  this 
same  flippancy  is  not  quite  outgrown,  but  it  gets 
a  tang  of  genial  truth  and  becomes  Stevenson's 
characteristic  form  of  wit.  To  his  father,  as  to 
so  many  of  the  citizens  of  Edinburgh,  he  was  full 
of  affectations  and  poses.  Later  on,  as  in  the  case 
of  so  many  men  of  genius,  these  things  appear  nor- 
mal to  his  character,  expressions  of  a  personality 
which  strives  to  feel  life  as  completely  as  possible, 
which  is  a  widely  inclusive  personality.  To  his 
father  and  his  teachers  he  appeared  negligent  of 
nearly  all  his  set  tasks,  and  his  confessed  truancy 
at  college  flaunted  itself  in  the  face  of  a  dignified 
faculty.  Yet  his  idleness,  as  it  turned  out,  was  per- 
haps the  most  serious  matter  in  his  education,  and 
the  fact  that  his  sincerity  and  earnestness  lay,  as 


48  STEVENSON 

clearly  as  elsewhere,  in  those  very  things  his  elders 
looked  askance  at,  undoubtedly  gave  a  touch  of 
paradox  to  his  whole  character. 

He  has  made  his  apology  in  all  these  essays  we 
have  mentioned,  for  no  one  preached  more  honestly 
and  humorously  what  he  practised ;  and  in  one  essay 
especially,  "An  Apology  for  Idlers,"  he  goes  to  the 
bottom  of  this  matter.  It  is  a  retrospect  through 
life  to  the  original  problem  of  the  schoolboy. 

"Extreme  busyness,  whether  at  school  or  college, 
kirk  or  market,  is  a  symptom  of  deficient  vitality; 
and  a  faculty  for  idleness  implies  a  catholic  appetite 
and  a  strong  sense  of  personal  identity.  There  is  a 
sort  of  dead-alive,  hackneyed  people  about,  who 
are  scarcely  conscious  of  living  except  in  the  exer- 
cise of  some  conventional  occupation.  Bring  these 
fellows  into  the  country,  or  set  them  aboard  ship, 
and  you  will  see  how  they  pine  for  their  desk  or 
their  study.  They  have  no  curiosity;  they  cannot 
give  themselves  over  to  random  provocations;  they 
do  not  take  pleasure  in  the  exercise  of  their  faculties 
for  its  own  sake;  and  unless  Necessity  lays  about 
them  with  a  stick,  they  will  even  stand  still.  It  is 
no  good  speaking  to  such  folk ;  they  cannot  be  idle, 
their  nature  is  not  generous  enough ;  and  they  pass 
those  hours  in  a  sort  of  coma  which  are  not  dedi- 
cated to  furious  moiling  in  the  gold-mill.  When 
they  do  not  require  to  go  to  the  office,  when  they  are 
not  hungry  and  have  no  mind  to  drink,  the  whole 
breathing  world  is  a  blank  to  them.    If  they  have 


THE   FAMILY   PROFESSION  49 

to  wait  an  hour  or  so  for  a  train,  they  fall 
into  a  stupid  trance  with  their  eyes  open.  To 
see  them,  you  would  suppose  there  was  nothing 
to  look  at  and  no  one  to  speak  with;  you 
would  imagine  they  were  paralyzed  or  alienated; 
and  yet  very  possibly  they  are  hard  workers  in  their 
own  way,  and  have  good  eyesight  for  a  flaw  in  a 
deed  or  a  turn  of  the  market.  They  have  been  to 
school  and  college,  but  all  the  time  they  had  their 
eye  on  the  medal ;  they  have  gone  about  in  the  world 
and  mixed  with  clever  people,  but  all  the  time  they 
were  thinking  of  their  own  affairs.  As  if  a  man's 
soul  were  not  too  small  to  begin  with,  they  have 
dwarfed  and  narrowed  theirs  by  a  life  of  all  work 
and  no  play ;  until  here  they  are  forty,  with  a  listless 
attention,  a  mind  vacant  of  all  material  of  amuse- 
ment, and  not  one  thought  to  rub  against  another, 
while  they  wait  for  the  train.  Before  he  was  breeched 
he  might  have  clambered  on  the  boxes ;  when  he  was 
twenty  he  would  have  stared  at  the  girls;  but  now 
the  pipe  is  smoked  out,  the  snuffbox  is  empty,  and 
my  gentleman  sits  bolt  upright  upon  a  bench,  with 
lamentable  eyes.  This  does  not  appeal  to  me  as  be- 
ing Success  in  Life. 

"But  it  is  not  only  the  person  himself  who  suffers 
from  his  busy  habits,  but  his  wife  and  children,  his 
friends  and  relations,  and  down  to  the  very  people 
he  sits  with  in  a  railway  carriage  or  an  omnibus. 
Perpetual  devotion  to  what  a  man  calls  his  business 
is  only  to  be  sustained  by  perpetual  neglect  of  many 
other  things.     And  it  is  not  by  any  means  certain 


50  STEVENSON 

that  a  man's  business  is  the  most  important  thing  he 
has  to  do." — "An  Apology  for  Idlers,"  Virginibus 
Puerisque. 

At  the  time  this  was  written  there  was  a  good  deal 
more  here  which  was  paradoxical  and  daring  than 
is  now  apparent.  We  have  come  to  see  that,  though 
Stevenson's  point  of  view  is  perhaps  a  trifle  too  pic- 
turesque, it  is  none  the  less  sound;  and  though  I 
have  heard  it  seriously  argued  that  this  essay  is 
flippant  and  artificial  and  unsafe  to  be  put  into  the 
hands  of  young  men,  as  undermining  persistence 
and  fortifying  impulse,  it  is  a  defense  of  that  real 
side  of  life  so  often  obscured  by  the  ambitions  of 
Vanity  Fair.  Stevenson  is  talking  about  the  ulti- 
mate things,  the  things  which  romantic  youth  sees 
and  moneyed  age  loses  sight  of.  If  he  must  needs 
accompany  his  doctrine  with  a  little  flourish  of 
bravery,  which  was  a  part  of  his  character  and  a 
part  of  his  gift  of  youth,  it  does  not  invalidate  his 
doctrine;  and  if  one  really  knows  Stevenson  this 
manner  is  never  flippancy,  but  only  another  proof 
of  his  sincerity. 


IV 


In  this  connection — for  it  will  help  us  to  under- 
stand him  better  here — it  is  interesting  to  look  at 
the  youth  as  he  appeared  during  his  school  and  col- 
lege days.  In  the  pages  of  Mr.  Baildon's  study  of 
Stevenson  is  a  glimpse  at  this  time  which  ought  to 


THE   FAMILY   PROFESSION  51 

be  especially  remarked,  for  it  is  of  the  Stevenson 
who  most  closely  corresponds  to  the  genius  of  these 
essays. 

"Stevenson  calls  himself  'ugly'  in  his  student  days, 
but  I  think  that  is  a  term  that  never  at  any  time 
fitted  him.  Certainly  to  him  as  a  boy  about  four- 
teen (with  the  creed  which  he  propounded  to  me, 
that  at  sixteen  one  was  a  man)  it  would  not  apply. 
In  body  Stevenson  was  assuredly  badly  set  up.  His 
limbs  were  long  and  lean  and  spidery,  and  his  chest 
flat,  so  as  almost  to  suggest  some  malnutrition,  such 
sharp  angles  and  corners  did  his  joints  make  under 
his  clothes.  But  in  face  this  was  belied.  His  brow 
was  oval  and  full,  over  soft  brown  eyes,  that  seemed 
already  to  have  drunk  the  sunlight  under  Southern 
vines.  The  whole  face  had  a  tendency  to  an  oval 
Madonna-like  type.  But  about  the  mouth  and  in 
the  mirthful,  mocking  light  of  the  eyes  there  lin- 
gered ever  a  ready  Autolycus  roguery,  that  rather 
suggested  the  sly  Hermes  masquerading  as  a  mortal. 
Yet  the  eyes  were  always  genial,  however  gaily  the 
lights  danced  in  them;  but  about  the  mouth  there 
was  something  tricksy  and  mocking,  as  of  a  spirit 
that  already  peeped  behind  the  scenes  of  Life's  pag- 
eant and  more  than  guessed  its  unrealities." 

He  had  little  grace  of  body.  He  was  unspeakably 
thin,  flat-chested,  with  no  promise  of  filling  out  as 
he  matured.  His  body  and  his  hands  expressed 
nothing  so  much  as  weakness  and  limpness,  and  he 


52  STEVENSON 

carried  himself  in  a  way  to  accentuate  this  impres- 
sion. But  his  face  was  not  of  the  same  aspect. 
There  was  a  liveliness  about  his  mouth  and  eyes 
and  a  geniality  that  centered  the  attention  there. 
His  voice,  vibrating,  always  enthusiastic,  spoke  of 
an  energy  of  mind  that  made  up  for  the  feebleness 
of  his  body.  When  his  friend,  Mrs.  Jenkin,  first 
saw  him  she  described  "a  slender,  brown,  long- 
haired lad,  with  great  dark  eyes,  a  brilliant  smile, 
and  a  gentle  deprecating  bend  of  the  head."  He 
was  then  eighteen. 

From  all  accounts  Stevenson  at  once  impressed 
his  acquaintances,  not  as  a  man  who  was  working 
to  be  his  father's  son,  but  as  an  artist,  the  cousin 
of  Bob  Stevenson,  the  painter  and  Bohemian,  and 
as  a  poet,  a  vagabond,  anything,  in  short,  except  a 
young  man  growing  up  to  live  behind  a  desk.  From 
the  accounts  of  Henley,  whom  he  soon  met  in  an 
Edinburgh  hospital;  of  Sidney  Colvin,  whom  he 
met  in  the  summer  vacation  of  1873  at  his  cousin's 
house  in  Suffolk;  of  Edmund  Gosse,  who  was  pre- 
sented to  him  at  the  Saville  Club  in  London,  and 
from  many  other  sources,  one  gets  much  the  same 
impression — delicacy  and  wildness  combined,  a  weak 
body  dignified  through  power  of  fascinating  by 
unique  and  lively  energy.  This  is  the  infinitely  vari- 
able, fluent  youth  whom  his  father  wished  to  mold 
in  a  certain  definite  fashion.  It  was  not  -  to  be. 
Such  force  as  Stevenson  possessed  contains  the 
germs  of  spontaneous  combustion.  Life  for  him 
was  a  pageant  of  adventure,  a  series  of  social  ex- 


THE   FAMILY    PROFESSION  53 

periments,  a  game  to  be  played  as  well  as  possible, 
and  a  thousand  other  things,  alike  in  being  anything 
except  a  routine. 

To  this  point  of  view  about  life  Stevenson  was 
further  inclined  by  his  health;  and  here  lies  one  of 
the  secret  explanations  of  his  character.  Bad  health 
is  usually  deadening,  invalidism  usually  reduces  peo- 
ple to  a  humdrum  regime  and  timorous  selfishness. 
Or,  in  the  case  of  a  boy  ambitious  for  a  fine  body, 
it  often  proves  a  steadying  agency  that  conduces  to 
a  regular  and  effective  life  which  in  the  end  con- 
quers disease.  Again,  it  is  often  simply  upsetting, 
producing  rashness  and  whimsical  irregular  habits, 
accompanied  by  a  silly  optimism  or  by  a  fitful  mor- 
bidity. It  does  not  often  have  the  effect  which  it 
had  on  Stevenson.  His  uncertain  health,  making 
necessary  many  weeks  indoors  in  the  midst  of  school, 
as  well  as  a  series  of  irregular  vacations  in  the  open 
air,  had  undoubtedly  increased  his  innate  love  of 
vagabondage.  But  this  was  a  positive,  a  creative 
thing,  not  just  an  incapacity  for  steady  work.  Then, 
though  it  is  also  true  that  Stevenson  was  rash  and 
whimsical,  not  liking  to  take  care  of  himself  ex- 
cept in  extremity,  and  that  he  exposed  himself  to 
danger,  now  foolishly  and  now  heroically,  all  his 
life,  yet  this  was  not  often  the  result  of  mere  moodi- 
ness, or  of  a  vain  desire  to  live  like  other  people 
unconcerned  for  their  health ;  it  sprang  rather  from 
the  sane  fear  which  creative  genius  has  of  systemati- 
cally enslaving  or  checking  the  spirit. 

The  nature  of  youthful  artistic  genius  drives  it 


54  STEVENSON 

forth  from  any  routine  or  restraints  which  it  has  not 
itself  established,  because  it  wishes  to  use  all  its 
motives,  powers,  experiences,  to  dismiss  nothing, 
to  make  everything  count.  Only  thus,  apparently, 
can  it  discover  what  is  wasteful  and  what  is  useful. 
For  things  which  are  seemingly,  and  by  all  the  ac- 
counts of  an  older  generation,  extravagant,  are  dis- 
covered to  be  the  indispensables ;  and  what  had  been 
indispensable  is  now  found  to  be  worn  hollow.  Ste- 
venson, reacting  against  the  restraint  which  his 
health,  his  parents,  and  his  professional  training 
were  imposing  on  him,  became,  while  he  was  begin- 
ning to  taste  life,  rather  indulgent  and  fantastic — 
especially  as  viewed  against  the  solidly  successful 
figure  of  his  father.  He  was  the  hero  of  exploits 
in  Jink  and  Libbelism,  to  be  read  of  in  his  own 
words  in  Mr.  Balfour's  Life.  He  wore  a  black 
shirt  for  the  sake  of  distinction  and  difference;  he 
talked  atheism  at  the  Speculative  Society ;  and  stood 
in  another  dangerously  secret  and  less  dignified  or- 
ganization, the  L.  J.  R.,  for  the  abolition  of  the 
House  of  Lords  and  like  "treasons."  He  records 
in  Virginibus  Puerisque  that  he  was  a  red-hot 
socialist  and  does  not  regret  it.  Indeed  he  counsels 
us  to  regret  none  of  our  youthful  vagaries,  which 
are,  perhaps,  the  beginning  of  liveness  instead  of 
deadness  in  us.  We  should  reach  sanity  and  matur- 
ity the  richer  for  discarded  opinions.  Youth  must 
have  speculative  wisdom  in  addition  to  knowledge, 
and  that  is  to  be  got  only  by  coming  down  through 
hard  experience  from  pinnacles  of  dreamy  ambi- 


THE    FAMILY    PROFESSION  55 

tion  to  real  life;  it  is  not  to  be  had  from  real  life 
alone;  one  must  have  looked  down  on  that  and  up 
toward  heaven.  "To  know  what  you  like  is  the  be- 
ginning of  wisdom  and  of  old  age.  Youth  is  wholly 
experimental' ' — a  remark  in  which  you  have  the 
cast  of  his  mind  at  this  time,  as  well  as  his  criticism 
of  it,  a  remark  made  in  the  spirit  of  genial  banter 
and  wise  levity  which  is  his  rare  quality.  Stevenson 
was  one  of  those  men  who  do  not  grow  old  and 
whose  wisdom  itself  remains  youthful  and  experi- 
mental, maintaining  as  consistently  the  recurrent 
point  of  view  of  youth  as  does  Doctor  Johnson's 
wisdom  maintain  the  established,  and  sometimes 
stale,  verdict  of  age.  With  Johnsonian  elegance, 
Stevenson  has  said,  "All  sorts  of  allowances  are 
made  for  the  illusions  of  youth,  and  none,  or  almost 
none,  for  the  disenchantments  of  age."  Was  Samuel 
Johnson  ever  wiser  than  that? 

The  beginnings  of  the  logical  power  which  pro- 
duced the  essays  of  Virginibus  Puerisque  may  very 
well  have  been,  however,  rather  disconcerting.  To 
a  father  they  may  have  all  looked  a  little  like  re- 
bellion. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  breach,  afterward  so 
completely  healed,  which  yet  during  part  of  Steven- 
son's college  days,  kept  father  and  son  apart,  came 
chiefly  from  Thomas  Stevenson's  failure  to  appre- 
ciate Louis's  real  seriousness.  He  saw  in  the  epi- 
sodes of  Libbelism  and  Jink  only  the  player  of 
pranks,  in  the  truant  only  the  truant,  in  the  consti- 
tution of  the  L.  J.  R.,  which  he  happened  to  discover 


56  STEVENSON 

one  day,  only  a  dangerous  irreligious  tendency.  He 
failed  to  see  what  the  boy's  imaginative  play,  so  long 
continued,  had  become.  To  him  it  looked  like  seri- 
ous folly — that  part  of  it  which  was  not,  at  best, 
"playing  at  home  with  paper  like  a  child."  He  did 
not  then  understand  the  spirit  of  his  son's  protest : 

"Say  not  of  me  that  weakly  I  declined 
The  labours  of  my  sires,  and  fled  the  sea, 
The  towers  we  founded  and  the  lamps  we  lit, 
To  play  at  home  with  paper  like  a  child." 


But  playing  at  home  with  paper  was  a  great  part 
of  Stevenson's  purpose  in  life.'  In  his  essay  on  "A 
College  Magazine,"  he  tells  us  that  all  through  boy- 
hood and  youth  he  was  known  and  pointed  out  for 
the  pattern  of  an  idler;  yet  he  was  always  busy  on 
his  own  private  end,  which  was  learning  to  write. 
And  to  this  end  was  his  experience  and  experiment 
to  count,  not  consciously  all  of  it,  but,  as  genius 
manages  the  thing,  instinctively.  What  Stevenson 
refers  to  in  this  essay  is  his  end  of  mastering  the 
technique  of  the  craft,  and  this  was  a  thoroughly 
conscious  end.  To  begin  with,  countless  exercises, 
"monkey  tricks"  he  calls  them,  in  imitation  of  the 
poets  and  essayists,  attempts  at  dramatic  dialogues, 
"gouty-footed  lyrics,"  essays  "in  the  style  of  the 
Book  of  Snobs,"  "abortive  novels"  and  other  "ven- 
triloquial  efforts"  were  the  earnest  amusement  of 


THE   FAMILY    PROFESSION  57 

his  idleness.  Later  on,  when  he  began  to  originate 
ideas  of  his  own  important  enough  to  absorb  his 
whole  attention,  this  method  was  of  course  aban- 
doned; and  he  continued  to  learn  his  craft,  to  the 
end  of  his  life,  as  every  artist  learns  it,  originally, 
in  terms  of  his  own  feelings  and  experience.  In 
view,  however,  of  Stevenson's  facility,  without 
which  he  could  not  have  hoped,  in  his  variable 
health,  to  have  produced  many  of  his  books,  we 
must  take  seriously  what  he  says  here  of  this  method 
of  the  "sedulous  ape."  As  a  method  for  the  begin- 
ner, it  has  been  brilliantly  condemned  by  various 
authorities.  Mr.  John  Jay  Chapman,  in  an  essay 
which  I  recommend  to  the  reader,  finds  in  it  the 
source  of  all  the  faults  of  Stevenson's  literary  art.1 
How  far  I  believe  this  judgment  to  be  true  will  be 
more  apparent  from  a  following  chapter.2  But  it 
should  be  said  here  that  obviously  Stevenson's 
method  is  not  the  way  to  learn  to  write,  if  by  writ- 
ing we  mean  the  whole  of  literary  art.  It  is  the 
way  Stevenson  learned  technique,  and  Stevenson 
was  a  mannered  and  naturally  eccentric  person  who, 
at  this  early  period  before  he  saw  his  own  ideas 
growing  steadily  under  his  eye,  enjoyed  playing 
with  tones,  much  as  the  young  painter  enjoys  certain 
combinations  of  color  in  the  pictures  he  copies.  These 
practise  exercises  may  have  given  him  a  conception 
of  style  as  something  separate  from  his  perception 
of  the  subject,  which  is,  I  believe,  a  confusing  no- 


1  Emerson  and  Other  Essays:  "Robert  Louis  Stevenson.' 

2  See  especially  pp.  87-91  and  pp.  95-101. 


58  STEVENSON 

tion.  They  may  have  increased  the  itch  for  compo- 
sition without  increasing  the  fund  of  materials  to 
compose.  But  can  any  one  say  that  they  have  dulled 
the  distinction  which  he  would  otherwise  have  at- 
tained as  a  writer?  Is  there  anything  in  Steven- 
son's character  as  we  know  it  which  shows  that  for 
him  this  youthful  method  was  an  injurious  affecta- 
tion? On  the  contrary,  it  was  merely  part  of  his 
normal  enthusiasm,  his  temperament,  for  literature. 
It  is,  in  the  connection  in  which  we  speak  of  it 
here,  proof  of  the  seriousness  and  persistence  of 
his  resolve  to  be  a  writer  at  last,  after  engineering 
and  law  were  done  with.  And  especially  it  is  a  proof 
of  his  conviction  of  original  power.  For  no  effort 
which  does  not  spring  from  a  sense  of  original 
power,  which  depends  on  the  imitative  spirit,  could 
have  persisted,  as  did  Stevenson's,  in  the  face  of  ill- 
ness and  discouragement. 

To  one  following  the  evolution  of  his  character, 
this  method  of  his,  which  was  also  the  method, 
you  will  recall,  of  men  as  different  in  tem- 
per as  Benjamin  Franklin  and  John  Keats,  seems 
a  normal  and  effective  way  of  learning  to  write. 
It  supplies  the  youth,  whose  experience  does 
not  yet  sufficiently  correspond  to  his  fancy,  with 
materials  and  forms  that  may  both  stimulate  and 
satisfy  him.  To  write  entirely  out  of  his  own  lim- 
ited experience  demands  a  form  and  a  simplicity 
which  is  beyond  his  power;  to  write  entirely  out  of 
his  fancies  and  dreams  demands  an  experience  in 
life  which  he  has  not  yet  had.   This  is  not  a  para- 


THE   FAMILY   PROFESSION  59 

dox.  It  is  the  observation  of  every  teacher  of 
writing.  Reading  the  great  men  and  writing  in  the 
light  of  their  methods  was,  for  Stevenson,  a  bring- 
ing of  the  two  parts  of  his  nature,  his  experience 
and  his  fancy,  into  closer  relationship.  And  it  may 
safely  be  asserted  that  only  an  imaginative  and  orig- 
inal youth  will  see  the  essential  quality  of  style  in 
the  great  ones  in  such  a  way  that  it  will  occur  to  him 
to  imitate  them.  Wq  should  remember  also  that 
it  is  a  part  of  the  egotism,  rather  than  the  humility 
of  authors,  that  they  delight  to  explain  the  origins 
of  their  craftsmanship,  and,  in  the  attribution  of 
their  final  skill  to  practical,  uninspired,  laborious 
methods,  we  should  not  mistake  them.  Anthony 
Trollope  was  prouder  of  his  ability  to  stick  at  his 
desk  and  write  so  many  words  an  hour  by  the  clock 
than  to  conceive  and  complete  the  plot  of  his  whole 
novel.  Shelley  juggled  long  with  the  words  of  his 
"Skylark"  before  they  at  all  corresponded  to  those 
profuse  strains  of  unpremeditated  art.  Poe  has  dis- 
sected his  poem,  "The  Raven,"  in  a  way  to  rob  it, 
for  the  literal  minded,  of  its  last  atom  of  inspira- 
tion. And  I  presume  if  it  were  known  that  Mr. 
Robert  Herrick  wrote  The  Common  Lot  in  univer- 
sity examination  books,  a  chapter  to  a  book,  it 
would  convince  some  persons  of  my  profession  that 
that  novel  smacks  of  the  blue  pencil.  Method  is, 
after  all,  not  the  interesting  thing  about  art.  Any 
one  who  has  seen  the  blowers  of  Venetian  glass 
knows  that  both  the  simplest  and  finest-spun  fan- 
tasies can  be  created  with  an  old  iron  tube  and  pair 


60  STEVENSON 

of  tongs.  It  is  part  of  Stevenson's  genial  egotism 
that  he  explained  a  good  deal  about  his  apprentice- 
ship, and  about  how  he  came  to  write  this  and  that 
— how  he  began  Treasure  Island  by  drawing  a  map 
of  it,  and  how  he  conjured  up  the  idea  of  The  Mas- 
ter of  Ballantrae  from  having  once  thought  of  the 
title  years  before  during  a  night  spent  in  the  village 
of  Ballantrae.  Such  testimony  as  to  his  means 
hardly  invalidates  his  results. 

Stevenson  entered  on  his  career — so  vague  to 
others,  so  promising  to  himself — in  the  face  of  oppo- 
sition. He  appears  never  to  have  regretted  his 
choice,  nor  the  opposition.  Seventeen  years  later, 
just  after  his  father  had  died,  and  Stevenson,  hav- 
ing come  to  America,  was  feeling  the  full  tide  of 
fame,  he  wrote  for  Scribner's  Magazine  a  "Letter  to 
a  Young  Gentleman  Who  Proposes  to  Embrace  the 
Career  of  Art."  This  young  gentleman  is  Stevenson 
himself  seventeen  years  back,  still  in  the  experi- 
mental stage,  knowing  as  yet  not  just  what  he  seeks, 
thinking  it  perhaps  to  be  beauty  or  pleasure,  when  it 
is  actually  but  "to  verify  his  own  existence  and  taste 
the  variety  of  human  fate."  With  wisdom  born  of 
trials  such  as  few  men  undergo,  yet  with  the  fullest 
youthful  sympathy,  Stevenson  advises  the  young 
man  who  once  he  was.  Had  he  a  right  to  embrace 
the  career  of  art?  Was  the  appeal  merely  that  of 
escape  from  the  cut-and-dried  professions,  and  did 
it  correspond  chiefly  to  an  impatience  with  the  hon- 
est trades?  If  so,  it  should  not  have  been  re'garded. 
It  was  a  temptation,  not  a  vocation.     He  tells  the 


THE   FAMILY   PROFESSION  61 

young  man  that  when  his  father  so  fiercely  and  so 
properly  discouraged  his  ambition,  he  was  probably 
recalling  a  similar  temptation  in  his  own  experience. 
"For  the  temptation  is  perhaps  nearly  as  common 
as  the  vocation  is  rare."  But  was  this  the  case  with 
that  young  man?  Was  he  not  able  from  the  first 
to  pursue  his  own  ends  with  conviction,  and  without 
success,  without  ever  asking  himself  that  discour- 
aging and  fatal  question,  Is  it  worth  doing?  Did 
he  not  recognize  in  himself  a  decisive  taste  which 
only  sharpened  with  habit  and  practise?  These  are 
the  tests  of  the  choice.  And  after  seventeen  years 
the  proof  of  the  career  is  not  money  and  applause, 
says  the  elder  R.  L.  S.,  though  he  had  at  last  re- 
ceived his  share;  it  is  the  pleasure  of  laboring  in  a 
craft  to  which  the  whole  matter  of  one's  life  con- 
tributes, and  which  opens  a  way  to  his  tastes,  his 
loves,  his  hatreds,  and  his  convictions. 

His  father's  character  had  been  expressed  in 
granite.  Stevenson's  was  to  have  another  perma- 
nence, an  cere  perennius  in  another  medium.  And 
his  father  lived  long  enough  to  recognize  that  his 
son  was  also  a  master  of  craftsmanship. 


CHAPTER  IV 

ORDERED   SOUTH 


THE  plan  for  Stevenson's  career,  on  graduating 
from  the  university  in  1871,  was  that  he  should 
study  law  in  order  to  safeguard  the  future,  and  that 
he  should,  at  the  same  time,  pursue  his  literary  ad- 
ventures and  training.  Though  neither  part  of  this 
scheme  then  seemed  to  interfere  gravely  with  the 
other,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  it  imposed  a 
nervous  strain  which  precipitated  the  breakdown  of 
his  health  in  1873. 

The  two  previous  years  had  been  full  of  what  was 
for  him  exciting  experience.  He  had  discovered 
Herbert  Spencer  and  Walt  Whitman,  and  had  made 
a  determination,  seriously  disturbing  in  such  a  fam- 
ily as  Thomas  Stevenson's,  to  become  a  free-thinker 
in  religious  and  ethical  matters.  His  resulting  quar- 
rels with  his  parents  led  him  more  than  ever  to 
cultivate  certain  friends  who  were,  in  those  days, 
both  solacing  and  over-stimulating.  "It  is  the  merit 
and  preservation  of  friendship  that  it  takes  place 
on  a  level  higher  than  the  actual  characters  of  the 
parties  would  seem  to  warrant,"  says  Stevenson, 
quoting  Thoreau.    His  friendships  with  his  cousin, 

62 


ORDERED   SOUTH  63 

"Talking  Bob"  Stevenson,  and  with  Charles  Baxter, 
whom  he  regarded  as  the  most  brilliant  conversa- 
tionalist he  ever  knew,  were  a  constant  exhilaration. 
Charles  Baxter's  long  and  invaluable  sympathy 
is  expressed  by  the  fact  that  at  the  time  of  Ste- 
venson's death  he  was  on  his  way  to  Samoa  for 
a  visit.  Then  there  was  James  Ferrier,  and  Sir 
Walter  Simpson,  with  the  latter  of  whom  he  made 
the  Inland  Voyage  and  many  other  expeditions; 
and  especially  there  were  Colvin  and  Mrs.  Sitwell, 
who  did  more  than  any  other  people  in  bringing  him 
out  of  his  mood  of  despair  and  in  reestablishing  him 
with  his  parents.  These  friendships,  which  re- 
mained always  an  absorbing  interest  with  Steven- 
son, for  no  man  ever  kept  his  friends  more  inti- 
mately in  spite  of  isolating  disease  and  of  absence, 
encouraged  him  to  constant  literary  experiment.  He 
wished  to  prove  himself.  Their  good-natured  ban- 
ter over  his  egotism  and  wildly  imaginative  talk, 
their  sympathy,  their  admiration,  were  all  of  a  mix- 
ture, I  imagine,  to  drive  such  a  youth  beyond  the 
wise  limits  of  effort. 

His  earliest  productions  reflect  a  state  of  mental 
tension,  of  over-anxiety  to  write  something,  any- 
thing. They  are  not  works  of  his  genius.  They 
are  random  productions  of  a  state  of  bad  health, 
when  he  was  possessed  by,  rather  than  himself  pos- 
sessing, an  ambition  to  fulfil  what  he  felt  to  be  his 
promise ;  they  are  tours  de  force,  not  productions  of 
the  natural  overflow  and  outflow  of  his  mind.  Dur- 
ing these  two  years  he  wrote  much  that  was  never 


64  STEVENSON 

to  see  the  light,  but  also  several  articles,  such  as  the 
essay  on  "Roads,"  the  travel  scenes  in  The  Lakes, 
Buckinghamshire,  Galloway,  which  were  printed 
later.  Of  the  essay  on  "Roads"  he  wrote  to  his 
mother  that  he  felt  he  had  there  said  well  several 
things  which  are  very  difficult  to  say  at  all.  This 
essay  he  had  just  sent  to  The  Portfolio,  when  he 
learned  in  London,  in  October,  1873,  how  serious 
the  condition  of  his  health  had  become. 

During  these  two  years  he  had  nominally  been 
reading  law  in  a  firm  of  writers  to  the  signet  in 
Edinburgh.  He  had  passed  the  preliminary  exam- 
inations for  the  Scottish  bar  in  November,  1872. 
The  previous  summer  vacation  he  had  spent  with 
Sir  Walter  Simpson  in  Frankfurt  and  the  Black 
Forest.  This  was  the  first  time  he  had  crossed  the 
Channel  since  his  thirteenth  year.  His  parents 
joined  him  at  the  end  of  August.  They  appear  to 
have  been  very  critical  as  to  the  way  he  was  em- 
ploying his  leisure;  and  the  return  to  Edinburgh 
brought  fresh  complications  with  his  father.  In 
February  his  father  unfortunately  found  the  draft 
of  the  constitution  of  the  L.  J.  R.,  which,  as  I  have 
said,  was  some  sort  of  rather  scandalous  compact 
between  Stevenson,  Baxter  and  other  Edinburgh 
youths.  The  nature  of  it  has  never  been  divulged ; 
but  the  document  convinced  the  elder  man  of  the 
truth  of  his  suspicions  regarding  what  he  thought 
to  be  his  son's  perverted  tendencies,  and  there  was 
a  terrible  scene. 

After  this  for  some  time,  indeed  till  Stevenson's 


ORDERED    SOUTH  65 

return  from  Mentone,  things  did  not  greatly  im- 
prove. He  grew  nervously  sick;  and  the  month  of 
August,  spent  at  his  cousin's,  Mrs.  Babington's,  in 
Suffolk,  while  bringing  him  the  new  friendships 
with  Mrs.  Sitwell  and  Sidney  Colvin,  who  were 
also  Mrs.  Babington's  guests,  was  too  exciting  to 
have  been  a  rest-cure.  To  Mrs.  Sitwell  he  addressed 
for  several  years  his  most  intimate  confidences  about 
his  ambitions  and  about  his  troubles.  She  was  that 
very  important  and  never  soon  forgotten  person  in 
the  history  of  youth,  the  first  complete  confidante. 
With  her  encouragement  and  counsel,  and  under 
the  criticism  of  her  strong  personality,  he  threshed 
his  ideas.  From  his  letters,  full  of  confession,  full  of 
egotism,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  she  was  for  him  the 
friend  whom  every  man  must  have  at  that  age,  and 
should  have  all  his  life,  the  woman  by  the  light  of 
whose  nature  he  sees  through  the  confusion  of  his 
own  thoughts  and  morals.  Later  in  life  she  is  the 
bright  memory  of  those  days  when  fate  was  not 
yet  darkened  by  the  shadow  of  exile.  His  last  let- 
ter, written  to  her  a  few  months  before  his  death 
in  Samoa,  is  the  pitiful  tribute  to  this  relationship. 
Sidney  Colvin,  then  a  young  man  of  twenty-eight, 
just  appoined  Professor  of  Art  at  Cambridge,  a 
colleague  of  Professor  Babington,  became  Steven- 
son's most  trusted  friend,  and  finally  his  literary 
executor.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Colvin 
(afterward  Sir  Sidney)  married  Mrs.  Sitwell  in 
1903,  after  Stevenson's  death.  This  summer  house- 
party  seems  to  have  been  full  of  satisfactions  and 


66  STEVENSON 

enthusiasms.  Stevenson  made  the  impression  of  a 
charmingly  eccentric  youth,  with  those  immature 
extravagances  that  are  part  of  the  economy  of  fu- 
ture resourcefulness. 

Stevenson  had  returned  to  Swanston  Cottage, 
his  father's  country  house  near  Edinburgh,  at  the 
end  of  August  and  had  shortly  fallen  ill.  To  aggra- 
vate his  nervous  condition  on  recovery,  the  theo- 
logical arguments  with  his  father  once  more  dis- 
rupted the  household.  He  writes  to  Baxter  that  he 
has  broken  his  parents'  hearts,  but  does  not  believe 
in  lying  in  such  matters,  even  to  preserve  peace. 
Largely,  therefore,  to  avoid  the  constant  irritation 
at  home,  and  also  because  he  was  anxious  to  be  at 
the  literary  center,  he  determined  to  read  law  in 
London.  There  was,  perhaps,  the  ultimate  pros- 
pect of  being  called  to  the  English  bar  instead  of 
the  Scottish.  On  arriving  in  London,  in  October, 
1873,  his  condition  was  seen  by  his  friends  to  be 
alarming.  The  physician  consulted,  Doctor  Andrew 
Clark,  discovered  a  threatening  of  tuberculosis  and 
a  state  of  nervous  exhaustion  grave  enough  to  war- 
rant ordering  Stevenson  to  spend  the  winter  on  the 
Riviera.  His  mother  came  from  Edinburgh  to  see 
him  off,  and  he  reached  Mentone  by  way  of  Avi- 
gnon on  November  twelfth. 


II 


Stevenson's  essay,  "Ordered  South,"  is  the  truth- 
ful description  of  the  mood  through  which  he  passed 


ORDERED    SOUTH  67 

during  this  shock  and  crisis  in  his  life.  The  theme 
of  cheerful  courage  which  forms  the  background 
of  his  argument,  the  optimist's  challenge  to  fate  and 
the  flourish  of  bravery  with  which  he  encourages 
himself  and  the  reader,  and  many  of  the  best-loved 
traits  of  his  clear,  courageous  reasoning,  are  fully 
exemplified  here.  They  presuppose,  however,  moods 
of  worry,  confusion,  even  of  despair;  and  the  indi- 
cations of  this  are  in  his  letters  home.  For  nobody, 
I  venture  to  say,  comes  to  the  expression  of  such 
reasoning  about  life  as  there  is  in  "Ordered  South'* 
without  having  reasoned  futilely  or  without  having 
lived  in  the  dark  of  his  own  mind,  even  preferring, 
for  a  while,  to  live  there. 

On  his  journey  Stevenson  began  to  revive  at 
Avignon,  where  the  color  of  the  South  drew  his 
vision  outward.  To  leave  London  and  Paris  in  their 
gray  November  fog  for  the  sharp  brilliance,  the 
yellow  and  white  lights  and  the  black  shadows  of 
the  Provencal  city,  is  to  turn  from  the  subjective 
to  the  objective.  Stevenson  at  first  felt,  as  he  wrote 
to  Mrs.  Sitwell,  that  he  had  left  his  soul  behind, 
that  he  could  not  enjoy  and  yet  was  not  unhappy. 
At  Mentone  he  was  "placid  and  inert."  In  the  essay 
he  describes  the  change  from  negative  to  positive 
moods.  He  tells  how  the  invalid  learns  to  recog- 
nize his  moods  and  seeks  to  encourage  the  most 
valuable ;  how  one  must  therefore  compromise  some- 
what with  the  most  prudent  advice  in  order  to  let 
the  soul  expand  and  to  enjoy  life  sufficiently  to  keep 
a  reasonably  fresh  view  of  it. 


68  STEVENSON 

As  a  thorough  romanticist  Stevenson  distrusted 
all  his  life  what  he  calls  "cowardly  and  prudential 
proverbs."  The  duty  of  acting  naturally  in  the  face 
of  catastrophe,  of  noting  that  the  sky  is  blue  and 
that  one  still  has  an  appetite  for  roast  beef,  this  is 
the  invalid's  heroism,  and  may  well  be  any  man's. 
It  is  living  rather  than  life  that  counts.  On  many 
a  page  of  future  essays  and  stories,  Stevenson  was 
to  preach  this  doctrine,  a  very  old  one,  but  never 
newer  than  in  his  mouth  and  as  the  expression  of 
his  character.  The  great  duty  of  man  in  the  midst 
of  uncertainty  is  normal  cheerfulness.  This  is  the 
text  of  "Aes  Triplex,"  of  the  fable  of  "The  Sink- 
ing Ship,"  of  "A  Christmas  Sermon,"  of  "Pan's 
Pipes,"  of  "Pulvis  et  Umbra."  It  is  the  unobtru- 
sive theme  of  all  his  essays  of  travel,  "The  Ama- 
teur Emigrant,"  "Across  the  Plains,"  "The  Silver- 
ado Squatters,"  "In  the  South  Seas,"  which  make 
together  the  epical  record  of  a  Cheerful  Traveler. 
It  lends  the  chief  grace  to  many  of  his  stories,  espe- 
cially "Providence  and  the  Guitar,"  and  "The  Treas- 
ure of  Franchard." 

The  theme  of  these  chapters  of  philosophy  and 
experience  is  the  theme  of  Stevenson's  own  recur- 
rent problem — how  to  live  superior  to  the  inevitable 
instability  of  his  own  fortunes,  how  to  live,  not 
with  daring  complacency,  but  with  earnestness,  on 
the  thin  crust  of  the  world  and  even  on  the  rim 
of  the  crater.  Feeling  always  the  precariousness 
of  his  lot,  and  at  the  same  time  having  so  keen  a 


ORDERED    SOUTH  69 

sense  for  the  realities  and  enjoyments  of  existence, 
Stevenson  grew  to  see  the  values  of  life  calmly  and 
sharply.  He  learned  to  look  on  the  one  hand  into 
an  abyss  without  fear,  and  on  the  other  toward  the 
solid  ground  without  regret.  Always  he  is  asking 
us,  from  his  vantage  point,  for  our  definition  of 
life,  and  begging  us  to  make  it  bravely,  to  touch 
it  with  poetry  and  humor,  to  defend  it  from  pathos 
and  sentimentality.  What  is  this  thing  in  which 
we  are  so  bound  up,  with  which  we  are  so  in  love, 
from  which  we  tremble  to  part,  and  which  the  whole 
effort  of  civilization  strives  to  preserve?  The  wis- 
dom of  Job,  or  of  Walt  Whitman,  all  literature 
and  all  philosophy,  is  but  an  attempt  to  answer  the 
question.  But  the  only  answer  is  the  life  of  a  man. 
The  only  permanent  answer  is  concrete.  Abstractly, 
life  can  be  defined  as  a  permanent  possibility  of 
sensation.  That  is  the  result  of  abstract  wisdom. 
But  for  what  sort  of  man  has  that  answer  ever  had 
a  meaning?  Who  is  in  love  with  mere  plant-like 
existence?  Now,  life  is,  first  of  all  and  last  of  all, 
living.  This  is  the  comprehensive  and  concrete  ac- 
count of  it — myriad  experience,  not  to  be  summed 
up  by  any  philosophical  abstraction.  For  ever-de- 
sirous and  ever-curious  man  life  is  not  to  be  reduced 
to  the  aspect  of  "a  permanent  possibility."  It  al- 
ways remains  something  more  precious,  more  like 
the  divine  gift  with  the  breath  of  immortality  in  it. 
"The  noise  of  the  mallet  and  chisel  is  scarcely 
quenched,  the  trumpets  are  hardly  done  blowing, 


70  STEVENSON 

when,  trailing  with  him  clouds  of  glory,  this  happy- 
starred,  full-blooded  spirit  shoots  into  the  spiritual 
land."  Whom  the  gods  love  die  young,  for  they 
are  those  who  can  drink  from  the  cup  of  experience 
and  not  grow  old.  But,  mark,  they  die.  Hence,  to 
live  eternally  they  must  live  here  earnestly.  If  they 
are  part  of  some  vast  abstraction,  it  shall  not  over- 
whelm them  here.  Here,  at  least,  is  their  chance 
for  individuality. — ["Aes  Triplex."] 

With  a  sane  and  triumphant  cheerfulness  the 
superior  individuals  of  the  world  rise  above  its 
mists  of  uncertainty  and  winds  of  chance.  Take 
what  precautions  science  prescribes.  Adopt  all  the 
safeguards  of  civilization  that  give  liberty.  But 
do  not  encumber  your  spirit  with  too  much  damp- 
ing caution.  For,  after  all,  you  have  still  to  obey 
the  sardonic  god  Pan,  even  though  you  know  that 
the  dinner  table  is  as  dangerous  as  a  field  of  battle, 
and  that  the  marriage  bed  is  but  the  ambuscade  of 
death.— ["Pan's  Pipes."] 

How  you  begin,  not  how  you  end,  is  the  thing 
that  matters.  It  is  not  safety  or  Success,  but  Ro- 
mance which  makes  for  happiness.  Success  is  the 
abstract  philosophy  of  life;  Romance  is  the  concrete 
enjoyment  of  living.  Success  dries  in  the  mouth; 
Romance  is  the  unquenchable  thirst.  What  then  is 
life?    How  will  you  make  your  definition? 

Look  at  the  thing  as  broadly  as  you  like,  it  will 
always  come  to  this :  your  conduct,  your  looks,  your 
very  attitude  hour  by  hour.    Can  you  then  succumb 


ORDERED    SOUTH  71 

to  Weltschmerz  because  of  a  conviction  of  the  im- 
personality of  nature  of  which  we  human  beings 
are  but  a  base  mechanical  improvement  in  some 
part?  What  if  the  universe  is  made  of  dust,  and 
we  are  a  warming,  a  disease,  of  this  agglutinated 
dust?  Does  that  relieve  us  of  any  part  of  our  con- 
duct ?  Does  not  the  desire  for  good,  the  Implacable 
Hunter,  still  follow  at  our  heels?  By  which  will 
you  live — a  guess,  or  your  own  experience? — ["Pul- 
vis  et  Umbra."] 

Obviously  we  are  not  intended  to  succeed.  Dis- 
appointment paves  the  way  for  another  effort,  for 
further  hope,  which  are  the  only  satisfactions.  A 
Faithful  Failure  —  that  is  the  description  of  our 
great  man. — ["A  Christmas  Sermon."] 

Success  is  sad.  Desire  and  curiosity  are  the  two 
eyes  through  which  to  see  the  world  in  enchanted 
colors.— ["El  Dorado."] 


Ill 


This  is  the  description,  in  these  essays,  of  Steven- 
son's characteristic  thought  about  life  from  his 
vantage  point  on  the  rim  of  the  crater.  It  is  a  gay 
philosophy,  and  every  philosopher  knows  that  it  is 
harder  to  be  gay  than  grim.  It  boasts,  but  it  is 
never  a  mockery.  It  decks  itself  out  with  bravado 
to  challenge  the  crucial  moment,  but  with  a  bravado 
that  is  cheer,  that  covers  zeal  and  not  weakness.  It  is 
a  philosophy  delicately  strong,  which  your  too  zeal- 


72  STEVENSON 

ous  mortal  can  not  lay  hold  of  without  crushing, 
and  which  your  fool  always  ruins  with  unintel- 
ligent enthusiasm.  It  is  always,  let  it  be  remem- 
bered, the  finely  wrought  expression  of  a  man  dis- 
ciplined in  the  school  which  unconquerable  egotism 
keeps  with  unconquerable  fate.  It  is  Stevenson's 
distinctive  note;  and  it  was  first  distinctly  struck 
in  his  letters  from  Mentone,  and  in  his  essay,  "Or- 
dered South,"  which  is  almost  as  personal  as  a  letter, 
and  which  was  written  with  a  touch  of  stylish  bra- 
very for  his  own  encouragement  and  for  the  cheer 
of  others. 

This  essay,  so  full  of  his  genial  egotism,  of  his 
sociability,  of  his  common  sense  touched  with  hu- 
mor, marks  the  brave  beginning  of  the  life  he  was 
to  face.  For  a  few  years,  now,  and  the  most  impor- 
tant period  of  his  artistic  development,  it  is  true  that 
trouble  was  less  ominous.  The  crust  thickened  a 
little  under  his  feet.  But  the  reverberation  was  still 
there.  It  is  important  to  understand  that  Steven- 
son was  never  a  sentimental  optimist.  His  optimism 
always  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  saw  happiness  take 
on  a  certain  gay  color  of  bravery,  even  when  the 
worst  evil  was  upon  him.  In  the  year  before  he 
died  he  wrote  to  George  Meredith,  from  Vailima 
Plantation,  an  often-quoted  letter  presenting  his 
case  against  fate.  He  says  that  he  has  not  had  a 
day's  real  health  for  fourteen  years,  and  yet  he  has 
kept  on  writing. 

"For  years  after  I  came  here  the  critics  (those 


ORDERED    SOUTH  73 

genial  gentlemen)  used  to  deplore  the  relaxation  of 
my  fibre  and  the  idleness  to  which  I  had  succumbed. 
I  hear  less  of  this  now;  the  next  thing  is  they  will 
tell  me  I  am  writing  myself  out !  and  that  my  uncon- 
scientious conduct  is  bringing  their  grey  hairs  with 
sorrow  to  the  dust.  I  do  not  know — I  mean  I  do 
know  one  thing.  For  fourteen  years  I  have  not 
had  a  day's  real  health;  I  have  wakened  sick  and 
gone  to  bed  weary;  and  I  have  done  my  work  un- 
flinchingly. I  have  written  in  bed,  and  written  out 
of  it,  written  in  hemorrhages,  written  in  sickness, 
written  torn  by  coughing,  written  when  my  head 
swam  for  weakness ;  and  for  so  long  it  seems  to  me 
I  have  won  my  wager  and  recovered  my  glove.  I 
am  better  now,  have  been  rightfully  speaking  since 
first  I  came  to  the  Pacific ;  and  still  few  are  the  days 
when  I  am  not  in  some  physical  distress.  And  the 
battle  goes  on — ill  or  well,  is  a  trifle ;  so  as  it  goes. 
I  was  made  for  a  contest,  and  the  Powers  have  so 
willed  that  my  battlefield  should  be  this  dingy,  inglo- 
rious one  of  the  bed  and  the  physic  bottle.  At  least 
I  have  not  failed,  but  I  would  have  preferred  a 
place  of  trumpetings  and  the  open  air  over  my 
head." 

These  are  the  facts,  not  quite  so  fearsome,  per- 
haps, as  they  appear  in  this  bald  catalogue;  but  do 
they  not  furnish  more  than  an  inkling  of  the  char- 
acter and  energy  of  the  man  who  could  dominate 
them  by  his  imagination,  who  could  with  a  gesture 
relegate  the  cheerless  part  of  them  to  a  corner  of 


74  STEVENSON 

his  life.  This  man  was  the  child  who  made  a  play 
out  of  the  hours  of  sickness,  who  had  grown  up 
from  the  land  of  make-believe  and  dreams  into  the 
real  world  grim  with  trouble,  carrying  with  him  for 
defense  a  store  of  that  practical,  romantic  courage 
which  only  the  enduring  fancy  of  youth  provides. 
Thus  Stevenson's  literary  character,  so  distinctly 
his  personal  character  as  well,  will  be  seen  to  be  the 
result  of  the  conflict  between  his  ambition  and  his 
health.  It  smacks  always  of  the  fortunes  of  this 
war,  of  the  reverses  as  well  as  of  the  successes,  of 
the  attack  and  of  the  counter-attack,  but  always, 
whether  in  good  or  ill  fortune,  of  the  gallantry  with 
which  the  war  was  conducted.  "I  will  do  nothing 
I  cannot  do  smiling !"    This  is  not  mere  bravado. 

"It  is  better  to  lose  health  like  a  spendthrift  than 
to  waste  it  like  a  miser.  It  is  better  to  live  and  be 
done  with  it  than  to  die  daily  in  the  sickroom.  By 
all  means  begin  your  folio:  even  if  the  doctor  does 
not  give  you  a  year,  even  if  he  hesitates  about  a 
month,  make  one  brave  push  and  see  what  can  be 
accomplished  in  a  week.  It  is  not  only  in  finished 
undertakings  that  we  ought  to  honour  useful  labour. 
A  spirit  goes  out  of  the  man  who  means  execution 
which  outlives  the  most  untimely  ending.  All  who 
have  meant  good  work  with  their  whole  hearts  have 
done  good  work,  although  they  may  die  before  they 
have  the  time  to  sign  it.  Every  heart  that  has  beat 
strong  and  cheerfully  has  left  a  hopeful  impulse 
behind  it  in  the  world,  and  bettered  the  tradition  of 


ORDERED    SOUTH  75 

mankind.  And  even  if  death  catch  people,  like  an 
open  pitfall,  and  in  mid-career,  laying  out  vast  pro- 
jects and  planning  monstrous  foundations,  flushed 
with  hope,  and  their  mouths  full  of  boastful  lan- 
guage, they  should  be  at  once  tripped  up  and  si- 
lenced :  is  there  not  something  brave  and  spirited  in 
such  a  termination?  and  does  not  life  go  down  with 
a  better  grace,  foaming  in  full  body  over  a  precipice, 
than  miserably  straggling  to  an  end  in  sandy  deltas  ? 
When  the  Greeks  made  their  fine  saying  that  those 
whom  the  gods  love  die  young,  I  cannot  help  believ- 
ing they  had  this  sort  of  death  also  in  their  eye. 
For  surely,  at  whatever  age  it  overtake  the  man, 
this  is  to  die  young.  Death  has  not  been  suffered  to 
take  so  much  as  an  illusion  from  his  heart.  In  the 
hot-fit  of  life,  a-tiptoe  on  the  highest  point  of  being, 
he  passes  at  a  bound  on  to  the  other  side.  The  noise 
of  the  mallet  and  chisel  is  scarcely  quenched,  the 
trumpets  are  hardly  done  blowing,  when,  trailing 
with  him  clouds  of  glory,  this  happy-starred,  full- 
blooded  spirit  shoots  into  the  spiritual  land." — "Aes 
Triplex/'  Virginibus  Puerisque. 

Stevenson's  winter  in  Mentone,  with  its  record  of 
friendships,  and  the  writing  of  "Ordered  South," 
shows  us  what  the  foundation  of  his  character  had 
been  and  what  the  structure  will  be.  As  I  have  said, 
the  discovery  of  the  threatened  disease  was,  in  his 
condition  of  nervous  exhaustion,  a  very  great  shock. 
During  the  first  morbid  fear  of  dying  he  developed 
a  fantastic,  yet  easily  accountable,  anxiety  over  not 


76  STEVENSON 

being  able  to  repay  the  money  his  father  was  spend- 
ing on  him.  Morbidity  had  been  part  of  Steven- 
son's problem  for  several  years,  and  it  was  only  by 
a  moral  struggle,  as  I  think  can  be  seen  from  the 
essay,  that  he  conquered  it.  But  once  conquered  it 
did  not  easily  return.  Rarely  again,  though  in  the 
face  of  a  thousand  difficulties,  did  his  gay  philoso- 
phy desert  him.  Let  me  repeat  here  that  the  author 
of  "Ordered  South"  is  the  author,  five  years  later, 
of  "Aes  Triplex";  of  the  "Requiem"  in  1884,  after 
a  like  period;  of  "Pulvis  et  Umbra"  and  "A  Christ- 
mas Sermon"  in  1888;  of  the  letter  to  George  Mere- 
dith from  which  I  have  quoted,  written  in  1893,  a 
year  before  his  death. 


IV 


In  November  he  had  already  learned  from  Doctor 
Bennet,  at  Nice,  that  there  was  still  no  definite  sign 
of  tuberculosis,  and  that  with  care  he  might  entirely 
avoid  it.  He  spent  a  lazy  winter,  making  little  at- 
tempt to  write,  except  for  an  essay  or  two;  and, 
having  perforce  to  forego  all  the  more  strenuous 
pleasures  of  Mentone,  such  as  the  marvelous  climbs 
on  the  heights  behind  the  town,  he  passed  a  great 
deal  of  time  at  his  hotel  with  some  Russians  and 
Americans,  about  whose  children  he  composed  a 
paper.  Colvin  made  him  two  visits.  In  April  it 
was  thought  he  could  safely  return  to  England.  He 
stopped  in  Paris  to  see  his  cousin  Bob,  who  was  be- 
coming a  painter,  and  who  was  from  now  on  the 


ORDERED   SOUTH  77 

plausible  attraction  that  brought  Stevenson  from 
Edinburgh  to  France.  He  proceeded  to  Edinburgh 
in  May,  1874.  But  he  was  never  again  to  remain 
in  Scotland  over  three  months  at  a  time. 

His  health,  though  now  much  improved,  was  never 
good  in  Scotland.  His  letters  for  the  next  few  years 
make  one  realize  the  continual  discomfort  of  his  life 
— sore  throats,  colds,  rheumatism,  gout — through 
all  of  which  he  kept  at  his  difficult  task  of  writing. 
Out  of  Scotland  he  seems  always  more  vigorous  and 
in  what  his  biographers  speak  of  as  "comparative 
health  and  strength."  Out  of  Scotland  he  was  equal 
to  rather  rough  trips  and  to  some  exposure ;  he  was 
able  to  exercise  more  freely,  to  sleep  out  under  the 
stars,  and  to  follow  the  whims  of  his  vagabond 
nature.  For  on  leaving  Mentone  it  is  to  be  observed 
that  his  long  wandering  had  begun,  which  never 
ceased  until  his  death  and  which  yet  seemed  so  little 
to  disturb  the  continuity  of  his  life.  It  was  a  long 
wandering  after  many  things  which  no  man  can 
follow  without  overwhelming  disorder  and  fatuity, 
if  at  all,  unless  his  character  is  growing  in  a  strenu- 
ous and  clear  purpose. 


CHAPTER  V 

VAGABONDAGE   AND   CRAFTSMANSHIP 


TO  a  young  man  the  world  seems  always  rather 
elderly.  His  family  and  friends  are,  first  and 
last,  prudential.  Dull  Respectability  sits  in  office 
chairs  and  stalks  the  street  in  long  coats.  Solid 
Citizenship  appears  to  be  the  one  legitimate  goal. 
To  dare  greatly  is  not  a  virtue ;  to  fail  to  experiment 
is  not  cowardice.  And  a  slight  incongruity  between 
a  daily  method  of  life  and  a  declared  purpose  in  life 
indicates  a  flaw  in  one's  make-up  that  bodes  disaster. 
No  miracles  are  possible  except  those  at  a  religious 
revival.  No  allowance  is  made  for  the  moral  prob- 
abilities and  transformations  of  genius.  The  elderly 
world  takes  little  account  of  genius  and  insists  first 
on  some  respectable  beginnings,  some  utterly  safe 
successes.  The  elderly  world,  judging  by  the  cau- 
tious rule  and  not  by  the  hopeful  exception,  knows 
that  failure  to  settle  down  indicates  that  a  young 
man  has  no  purpose.  It  always  prefers  fixity  to 
energy;  in  fact,  unless  energy  radiates  from  an 
established  source  it  hardly  recognizes  it  as  energy 
at  all.  To  prudential  family  and  friends,  the  failure 

78 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN   79 

to  settle  down  is  a  clear  sign  that  a  young  man's 
pretentions  to  genius  are  the  result  of  the  untrained 
enthusiasm  of  youth,  not  of  a  clear  understanding 
of  the  circumstances  of  life.  It  smacks  of  defiance 
and  further  failure,  not  of  success. 

World,  family,  and  friends  are  usually  right ;  and 
in  Stevenson's  case,  his  behavior  during  these  criti- 
cal years,  his  refusal  to  find  out  what  regular  habits 
would  do  for  his  health,  must  have  been  to  all  con- 
cerned peculiarly  discouraging.  Even  granting  him 
genius,  there  could  have  been  little  difficulty  in  show- 
ing that,  logically,  his  literary  production  would  be 
sounder  if  he  came  to  it  from  some  sort  of  profes- 
sional point  of  view  than  from  a  boyish  decision  to 
be  a  free  lance  and  to  live  solely  for  experience. 
Dickens,  Thackeray,  George  Eliot,  entered  literature 
through  the  gateway  of  paid  journalism.  Trollope's 
opportunities  as  a  post-office  official  furnished  him 
with  his  earliest  materials,  and,  throughout  his  ca- 
reer, with  the  necessary  observation  of  life.  Charles 
Reade  had  been  a  lawyer.  The  polite  essayists, 
Lamb  and  Hazlitt,  whose  manners  Stevenson  some- 
what copied,  were  respectively  a  business  man  and 
a  painter.  Of  his  friends,  Gosse  was  a  librarian, 
Henley  was  to  be  an  editor,  Meredith  was  a  profes- 
sional reader  and  reviewer,  and  Lang  an  Oxford 
don.  Of  the  other  men  who  were  growing  up  about 
him,  Hardy  had  been  an  architect,  Hall  Caine  was 
to  be  an  architect,  Kipling  and  Barrie  were  both 
journalists.  It  is,  in  fact,  difficult  to  think  of  many 
exceptions  to  the  rule  that  successful  literary  men 


80  STEVENSON 

learn  life  and  how  to  see  life  afresh  from  the  van- 
tage of  an  active  business  or  profession,  from  a 
position  in  life  which  is  primarily  practical  rather 
than  primarily  critical.  The  most  significant  men 
of  the  present  hour,  Conrad,  Wells,  Bennett,  Gals- 
worthy, De  Morgan,  were  all  trained  for  literature, 
not  as  Stevenson  trained  himself  by  going  about 
with  "a  book  to  read  in  and  another  book  to  write 
in,"  while  playing  truant  to  a  practical  task;  they 
were  trained  by  paying  attention  to  practical  tasks, 
in  seamanship,  in  biology,  in  journalism,  in  official 
work,  in  archaeology. 

Yet  no  such  list  of  authors  with  a  professional 
background  makes  a  valid  argument  for  the  ulti- 
mate failure  of  the  unattached  writer.  (What  fail- 
ure it  does  predict  for  him  is  chiefly  temporary  and 
financial,  and  the  prediction  was  thus  far  true  for 
Stevenson's  case  in  that  he  did  not  for  many  years 
earn  from  his  pen  a  living  wage.)  It  is  to  be  espe- 
cially noticed  that  such  a  list  of  writers  who  safe- 
guard genius  by  a  profession  includes  few  poets. 
Among  the  poets  there  would  be  a  whole  set  of 
names  that  bring  to  mind  no  profession,  no  prac- 
tical beginnings,  and  rarely  as  much  "schooling" 
as  Stevenson  had  received.  Nearly  all  the  poets  of 
note  have  begun  as  poets  and  have  done  little  else 
in  the  line  of  regular  achievement  but  write  poetry. 
Now  Stevenson's  romantic  way  of  life,  his  method 
of  observation  and  work,  are  essentially  those  of  a 
poet.  It  has  been  already  noted  that  he  has  the 
same  sort  of  egotistical  purposes,  or  raisons  d'etre, 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN   81 

as  belong  to  the  poetic  temperament.  It  is  hardly 
to  be  believed  that  his  production  would  have  been 
more  vital  and  durable  than  it  is  for  a  longer  appren- 
ticeship in  a  definite  profession. 


II 


To  understand,  from  this  point  of  view,  Steven- 
son's accomplishment,  its  relation  to  his  character 
and  to  his  outward  life,  nothing  is  more  important 
than  to  visualize  at  once  broadly  and  exactly  his 
energies  during  this  period  after  he  returned  from 
Mentone.  His  life  from  1874  to  1880  presents 
such  a  picture  of  random  comings  and  goings,  dwell- 
ings here  and  there  and  nowhere,  plans  perfected 
only  to  be  abandoned,  articles  written  only  to  be 
torn  up,  that  it  requires  some  patience  if  not  some 
special  knowledge  of  the  psychology  of  romantic 
genius  to  catch  the  drift  of  it  all  and  to  perceive 
his  essential  consistency. 

Sir  Sidney  Colvin,  speaking  of  Stevenson's  talk 
at  this  period,  calls  him  the  "past-master  of  the 
random."  The  phrase  will  apply  as  well,  though 
with  a  slightly  different  meaning,  to  his  part  in  life 
during  his  apprenticeship.  If  Stevenson  was  always 
a  wanderer  and  vagabond,  he  was  also  a  master  of 
the  art  of  random  living.  This  is  a  sanctioning  title 
by  which  many  an  artist  might  seek  to  defend  his 
way  of  life,  and  it  should  imply  a  control  of  the 
providential  and  changing  details  of  a  wanderer's 
existence  by  a  constant  artistic  purpose.     In  the 


82  STEVENSON 

end  Stevenson's  purpose  is  apparent,  his  character 
emerges  from  confusion  and  dominates. 

Let  it  be  understood  that  he  was,  during  this 
period,  in  possession  of  a  sufficient,  allowance — 
seven  pounds  a  month — to  support  the  bare  necessi- 
ties of  life  where  he  would,  and  that  in  1875,  on  be- 
coming advocate  at  the  Scottish  bar  he  received 
from  his  father  an  instalment  of  his  patrimony,  one 
thousand  pounds,  which,  however,  lasted  him  and 
his  impecunious  friends  a  very  short  time.  Certainly 
there  was  little  or  none  of  this  sum  left  when  he 
started  for  California  in  1879.  From  his  writing 
he  made  only  a  few  pounds — Mr.  Balfour  says 
never  over  fifty  pounds — before  1878,  his  first  great 
year  of  production.  It  should  also  be  borne  in 
mind  that  the  necessities  of  his  health,  joining  nat- 
urally with  his  inclination,  led  him  to  cultivate 
a  roving  disposition.  His  health  during  this  period 
probably  hampered,  no  more  than  stimulated,  his 
literary  activity;  but  unquestionably  he  was  never 
very  well.  The  recovery  at  Mentone  was  only  a 
recovery  from  acute  nervous  breakdown,  and  when 
Stevenson  began  his  voyage  to  California  he  was 
already  suffering  from  serious  weakness  of  the 
lungs. 

A  mere  itinerary  of  Stevenson's  doings  for  the 
six  years  following  his  return  to  Edinburgh,  in  May, 
1874,  is  the  fundamental  comment  on  his  character 
and  aims.  Therefore  let  us  observe  it  carefully.  In 
Edinburgh  and  Swanston  during  May  and  June, 
1874,  he  was  finishing  his  essay  on  Victor  Hugo  for 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN   83 

Leslie  Stephen,  editor  of  The  Comhill,  and  was  ra- 
ther fitfully  at  work  on  a  study  of  Walt  Whitman. 
He  finished  the  paper  called  "Movements  of  Young 
Children"  and  a  review  of  Lytton's  Fables  in  Song. 
Meanwhile  Mentone  had  not  cured  his  tendency  to 
sore  throat,  and  he  also  found  himself  suffering 
from  that  confusion  in  his  head  which  he  had  com- 
plained of  and  learned  to  tolerate  during  his  conva- 
lescence. He  made  a  visit  to  Hampstead  with  Col- 
vin ;  and  in  August,  much  set  up  by  a  short  yachting 
trip  with  Sir  Walter  Simpson,  he  went  with  his 
parents  to  North  Wales.  The  article  on  Knox  occu- 
pied him  now  for  some  time,  and  incidentally  he 
printed  a  pamphlet  called  An  Appeal  to  the  Clergy 
of  the  Church  of  Scotland.  From  a  letter,  it  appears 
that  he  was  writing  some  of  those  short  fables  that 
were  published  posthumously.  In  November  he 
walked  through  Buckinghamshire,  and  later  made 
a  sketch  of  his  experiences,  "An  Autumn  Effect," 
for  The  Portfolio.  After  visiting  London  he  was 
again,  before  the  end  of  the  month,  in  Edinburgh 
and  at  work  on  a  story,  one  of  the  many  never 
printed,  "King  Matthias's  Hunting  Horn,"  which 
excited  him  "like  wine,  or  fire,  or  death,  or  love 
or  something,"  because  it  seemed  so  "weird  and  fan- 
tastic." "Nothing  of  my  own  writing,"  he  says  to 
Mrs.  Sitwell,  "ever  excited  me  so  much."  He  forth- 
with proceeds  to  write  an  Italian  story,  "When  the 
Devil  was  Well,"  and  some  dozen  others,  none  ever 
quite  finished,  but  of  which  he  makes  a  list  that  gives 
him  the  idea  of  immediate  publication  in  book  form* 


84  STEVENSON 

"A  book  with  boards  is  a  book  with  boards;  even 
if  it  bain't  a  very  fat  one."  This  plan  for  a  book, 
conceived  in  January  1875,  seems  to  have  evap- 
orated in  February.  That  month  is  notable  for  his 
meeting  Henley  at  the  City  Hospital.  April  saw 
him  in  Barbizon  with  the  ideas  for  "Forest  Notes" 
beginning  to  "bubble"  in  his  mind.  Before  the  end 
of  the  month  he  is  back  in  Edinburgh.  His  bar 
examination  was  looming  up,  and  though  he  wrote 
an  article  on  Burns  for  the  Britannica  (which  turned 
out  to  be  not  quite  suitable),  he  devoted  himself  to 
reading  law,  and  he  passed  his  examination  credit- 
ably on  July  fourteenth. 

To  this  end  he  had  been  nominally  at  work  for 
four  years.  Yet  he  never  made  more  than  a  per- 
functory effort  to  practise,  and  the  most  obvious 
result  of  the  whole  performance  was  to  prove  con- 
clusively to  his  father  that  he  would  not  become  a 
solid  Edinburgh  citizen  in  a  solid  profession  of  any 
kind.  Thomas  Stevenson,  in  spite  of  his  son's  grow- 
ing literary  success,  appears  to  have  acquired  no 
new  faith  in  his  character.  The  way  in  which  the 
patrimony  of  one  thousand  pounds  disappeared 
could  not  have  mended  matters,  and  it  was  only 
after  R.  L.  S.'s  marriage  and  return  from  Cali- 
fornia that  his  father  began  to  understand  the  force 
of  that  soft  and  pliant  nature  which  had  grown  up 
under  his  eye. 

Stevenson  was  at  Barbizon  and  Loiret  in  August, 
writing  "Forest  Notes";  and  with  his  parents  at 
Wiesbaden  and  Homburg  later  in  the  summer.    The 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN   85 

winter  of  1875-76  was  spent  with  considerable  dis- 
comfort in  Edinburgh,  where  he  made  a  faint- 
hearted attempt  to  practise  law.  In  January  he  took 
a  short  walking  trip  in  Carrick  and  Galloway,  de- 
scribed in  one  of  his  essays.  During  the  spring  he 
wrote  the  articles  on  "Beranger,"  "Walking  Tours," 
and  "Charles  d'Orleans."  In  August,  after  a  tour  in 
the  West  Highlands,  he  and  Sir  Walter  Simpson 
canoed  down  the  Oise,  winding  up  at  Barbizon  and 
Grez.  The  record  of  this  expedition,  An  Inland 
Voyage,  which  is  Stevenson's  first  book,  is  by  no 
means  the  most  important  matter  connected  with  it. 
The  voyage  led  to  his  meeting  Mrs.  Osbourne  at 
Grez  and  determined  him  in  his  resolution  not  to 
settle  down  in  Edinburgh. 

For  Stevenson  the  leisure  and  the  romantic  ex- 
citement of  this  autumn  was  immediately  fruitful. 
Some  of  his  unsurpassably  best  work  followed — 
the  first  part  of  Virginibus  Puerisque,  the  essay  on 
Idlers,  and  the  essay  on  Villon.  Besides,  he  wrote 
the  farcical  fragment  called  "The  Hair  Trunk." 
The  winter  of  1876-77  saw  him  at  work  in  Edin- 
burgh on  these  things,  together  with  what  are  per- 
haps his  two  cleverest  short  stories,  "The  Sire  de 
Maletroit's  Door"  and  "A  Lodging  for  the  Night." 
No  work  of  Stevenson  shows  so  well  the  genius  with 
which  he  caught  the  kindred  spirit  of  French  ro- 
mances. In  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Sitwell  from  Penzance 
in  August  he  mentions  "The  Sire  de  Maletroit's 
Door"  and  "Will  o'  the  Mill"  as  being  finished,  and 
an  essay  on  "The  Two  Saint  Michaels'  Mounts"  and 


86  STEVENSON 

a  story  called  "The  Stepfather's  Story"  as  being  "in 
the  clouds."  "You  see,"  he  adds,  "how  work  bub- 
bles in  my  mind." 

Eighteen  hundred  seventy-eight  was  his  great 
year.  He  was  extraordinarily  restless  and  extraord- 
inarily productive;  and  his  friendship  with  Mrs. 
Osbourne  was  his  great  inspiration.  The  list  of  this 
year's  essays,  stories,  plays,  was  enough  to  establish 
a  considerable  fame.  In  The  Cornhill  appeared 
"Will  o'  the  Mill,"  "Crabbed  Age  and  Youth,"  "Aes 
Triplex,"  "English  Admirals,"  "Child's  Play";  in 
London  (which  Henley  edited),  "A  Plea  for  Gas 
Lamps,"  "Pan's  Pipes,"  "El  Dorado,"  "Providence 
and  the  Guitar" ;  in  The  Temple  Bar,  "The  Sire  de 
Maletroit's  Door" ;  in  The  New  Quarterly,  "Walt 
Whitman" ;  in  The  Portfolio,  and  also  in  book  form, 
Picturesque  Notes  on  Edinburgh.  Besides  these  was 
the  play  Deacon  Brodie,  written  with  Henley,  and  his 
first  book,  the  Inland  Voyage.  The  year  was  spent 
chiefly  in  France ;  and  these  things  were  composed  in 
Dieppe,  Paris,  Monastir  (where  he  began  his  donkey 
excursion),  Barbizon  and  Grez.  He  also  made  visits 
in  London,  Cambridge  and  Burford  Bridge.  During 
the  winter  he  was  in  Edinburgh  writing  Travels 
with  a  Donkey.  In  August,  1879,  he  followed  Mrs. 
Osbourne  to  California. 

These  six  years  of  continual  wandering,  with  their 
great  variety  of  experience  and  literary  effort,  ma- 
tured Stevenson  in  his  craft.  He  had  not,  it  is  true, 
written  any  of  his  few  longer  works.  He  was  still 
over-full  of  mere  plans  and  beginnings;  and  indeed 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN   87 

all  his  life  he  continued  to  begin  with  enthusiasm 
and  assurance  ventures  which  never  matured,  which 
were  either  literary  pastimes  to  be  dropped  in  a  day 
or  two  or  which  proved  after  much  labor  to  lead 
only  toward  a  mechanical  and  arbitrary  ending. 
But  by  1880  we  may  say  that  he  had  reached  that 
way  of  thinking,  that  style,  which  is  typical  of  his 
production  as  a  whole.  In  the  essays  of  Virginibus 
Puerisque,  in  "Francois  Villon/'  in  those  master- 
pieces of  short  story  and  fable  like  "Will  o'  the  Mill" 
and  "Lodging  for  the  Night/'  you  will  find  his  most 
representative  traits.  Also  in  such  sketches  as  "For- 
est Notes,"  Travels  with  a  Donkey,  you  will  find  his 
account  of  how  he  acquired  these  traits. 


Ill 


The  fact  that  Stevenson  began  his  career  as  a 
writer  with  a  great  deal  of  sermonizing  on  the  sub- 
ject of  craftsmanship  is  significant.  It  is  in  keeping 
with  his  self -consciousness,  with  his  desire  to  write 
autobiography.  It  is  part  of  his  defense  of  his 
way  of  life.  It  has  also  undoubtedly  helped  to  cre- 
ate the  taste  by  which  it  is  to  be  appreciated.  Now 
there  is  in  Stevenson  a  good  deal  of  writing  for 
writing's  sake,  a  good  deal  of  practise  work,  and 
this  his  philosophy  of  art  accounts  for.  Accord- 
ing to  his  professions  in  "A  College  Magazine,"  that 
essay  where  he  lays  down  with  emphasis  his  rules 
for  the  acquiring  of  craftsmanship,  he  went  about 


88  STEVENSON 

with  two  books  in  his  pocket,  one  to  read  in  and  one 
to  write  in.  As  he  walked  or  sat  by  the  roadside 
he  was  busy  fitting  what  he  saw  with  appropriate 
words.  He  accompanied  himself  on  his  walks  with 
dramatic  dialogues  and  often  wrote  down  conversa- 
tions from  memory.  Thus  he  "lived  with  words." 
But  this  was  not  the  most  efficient  part  of  his  train- 
ing, for  it  had  one  grave  defect;  it  set  no  standard 
of  achievement.  There  was  more  profit,  as  well  as 
more  effort,  in  certain  exercises  in  imitation.  When- 
ever he  read  any  book  or  passage  particularly  pleas- 
ing he  at  once  sat  down  "to  ape  that  quality."  In 
Hazlitt,  Lamb,  Wordsworth,  Sir  Thomas  Browne, 
Defoe,  Hawthorne,  Montaigne,  Baudelaire,  Ober- 
mann,  Ruskin,  Browning,  Keats,  Thackeray,  Du- 
mas, he  found  masters  to  whom  he  could  play  "the 
sedulous  ape,"  inspirers  of  his  "monkey-tricks." 
And  though  he  calls  them  "monkey-tricks,"  "arts 
of  impersonation,"  and  "purely  ventriloquial  ef- 
forts," he  concludes  his  confession  of  faith  as  fol- 
lows :  "That,  like  it  or  not,  it  is  the  way  to  learn  to 
write;  whether  I  have  profited  or  not,  that  is  the 
way.  It  was  so  Keats  learned,  and  there  was  never 
a  finer  temperament  for  literature  than  Keats's;  it 
was  so,  if  we  could  trace  it  out,  that  all  men  have 
learned." 

To  many  people  this  has  seemed  an  amazing  and 
unnatural  doctrine.  For  it  is  doctrine ;  and  whether 
you  believe  that  Stevenson  could  really  have  per- 
sisted long  in  so  self-conscious  a  mood,  or  whether 
you  take  his  statement  as  illustrating  only  his  gen- 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN   89 

eral  zeal  of  purpose,  it  still  remains  true  that  Ste- 
venson, looking  back  over  his  apprenticeship  years, 
believed  such  habits  and  methods  to  be  essential  and 
usual  influences  in  the  acquisition  of  craftsmanship. 
But  who,  it  is  asked,  besides  Stevenson,  ever  car- 
ried out  this  sort  of  thing  literally  and  completely? 
Perhaps  not  many  people.  But  nearly  all  our  great 
poets  have  comprehended  the  originality  of  some- 
body else  so  intimately  that  it  was  creative  in  their 
own  minds.  Keats  and  Milton  acknowledge  Spen- 
ser to  be  their  master.  Wordsworth  is  greatly  in- 
debted to  Cowper.  Byron  learned  much  of  his  art 
from  Pope.  This  means,  however,  not  that  they 
learned  to  think  by  studying  models,  but  that  they 
learned  how  better  to  hear  and  visualize  their 
thoughts.  The  technique  of  poetry  consists  largely 
in  making  thought  sensational ; '  and  just  as  the 
painter  trains  his  eye  by  copying  pictures,  by  submit- 
ting to  the  masters,  so  the  poet  acquires  some  power 
of  words  by  catching  the  glint  and  the  true  ring  of 
them.  It  can  not  be  inferred  that  his  own  composi- 
tions are  echoes.  The  power  to  write  as  artists  write 
consists  not  only  in  thinking  logically  and  simply, 
but  in  feeling  vividly  while  one  writes.  The  second 
part  of  this  unified  process,  usually  thought  of  as 
the  first,  is  not  alone  the  fixing  of  thought  in 
language,  but  the  transforming  of  sensation  into 
thought  and  the  preservation  of  it  still  as  sensation 
in  language.  And  it  is  in  this  matter  that  exercises 
in  imitation  count,  for  they  bring  a  writer  to  a  more 
thorough  understanding  of  the  sensational  texture 


90  STEVENSON 

of  language  than  he  can  possibly  arrive  at  inde- 
pendently. 

This  kind  of  imitation,  as  Stevenson  practised  it, 
is  a  form  of  curiosity.  The  artist  wishes  to  get  the 
feel  of  the  language,  and  he  imitates  a  manner  or 
a  tone,  not  for  the  sake  of  modeling  his  own  thoughts 
in  the  same  way,  but  for  the  sake  of  satisfying  his 
curiosity  as  to  what  that  peculiar  manner  and  tone 
consist  in.  A  perfectly  literal  following  of  Steven- 
son's famous  advice  would  require  the  same  sort 
of  persistence  that  Stevenson  himself  showed  and 
would  almost  certainly  help  a  man  to  discover  the 
vein  of  his  originality.  Few  men,  however,  have 
sufficient  character  or  curiosity  to  investigate  their 
capabilities  in  this  way.  As  regards  carrying  about 
a  note-book  to  write  in  by  the  wayside,  there  are 
doubtless  few  honest  adherents  to  that  extreme 
doctrine;  but  I  find  pasted  into  my  copy  of  Mem- 
ories and  Portraits  the  following  instance,  which  I 
believe  is  from  a  book  of  reminiscences  by  a  well- 
known  journalist: 

"Years  ago,  in  old  vacation  swimming  days,  and 
in  a  prosy  little  Western  river,  I  used  to  swim  across 
to  the  diving  log  with  a  notebook  and  a  pencil  in  my 
teeth;  these  instruments  were  deposited  on  the  log, 
and  up  from  every  dive  I  came  to  scribble  in  the 
notebook  another  wet-fingered  phrase  or  two  of 
the  underwater  world,  of  how  the  sun  looked  like 
a  lamp  in  a  dome,  of  how  my  swimming  comrades 
were  turned  golden,  green,  beautiful!  for  I  was 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN   91 

writing  a  poem  on  Hylas  and  the  nymphs.  So  in 
another  year  I  was  writing  upon  a  theme  whose  sym- 
bol and  image  was  the  wind  blowing,  and,  of  course, 
a  girl  in  the  wind;  I  watched  five  seasons  through, 
watched  and  caught  at  and  tried  to  express  those 
beautiful  living  images.  I  remember  an  undated 
midwinter  in  Chicago — or  was  it  New  York? — 
when  at  the  corners  of  those  deep  city  canons  every 
woman  became,  this  instant  and  that,  statuary  beau- 
tiful as  the  winged  Victory.  .  .  .  If  I  may  para- 
phrase Stevenson,  that,  like  it  or  not,  is  the  way  to 
learn  to  tell  the  truth;  whether  I  have  profited  or 
not,  that  is  the  way.  Live  it  out  for  yourself,  and 
all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you,  the  rules 
and  the  rules,  as  you  grow  in  wise  experience  of 
your  own  life." 

This  is  interesting  because  it  indicates  the  danger 
in  which  Stevenson  himself  too  often  fell — the  dan- 
ger of  painting  instead  of  writing.  When  a  young 
realist,  aged  fifteen  (?)  must  write  his  poem  by 
diving  under  the  river  to  find  an  adjective,  coming 
up  to  record  golden,  diving  for  another  and  coming 
up  to  record  green,  he  is  applying  to  literature  pre- 
cisely the  methods  of  the  more  sensational  art  of 
painting.     He  is  indeed  painting  and  not  writing.1 


1  That  the  note-book  realist  does  not  have  the  poets  on  his 
side  may  be  seen  from  the  following  instance,  cited  in  Knight's 
edition  of  Wordsworth's  poems :  "Mr.  Aubrey  de  Vere  tells 
of  a  conversation  he  had  with  Wordsworth,  in  which  he  ve- 
hemently condemned  the  ultra-realistic  poet,  who  goes  to  Na- 
ture with  'pencil  and  note-book,  and  jots  down  whatever 
strikes  him  most,'  adding,  'Nature  does  not  permit  an  inven- 


92  STEVENSON 

In  the  next  chapter  there  will  be  a  good  deal  to 
say  about  the  influence  of  the  painter's  art  on  Ste- 
venson's style,  an  influence  not  wholly  beneficial. 
But  what  Stevenson  once  wrote  in  a  letter  to  his 
young  friend,  Mr.  Trevor  Haddon,  now  a  member 
of  the  Royal  Society  of  British  Artists,  about  art 
in  general  shows  his  broad  understanding  of  theory 
as  well  as  his  private  enthusiasm  for  technique. 
He  heads  his  remarks,  "Notes  for  the  student 
of  any  art:"  "1.  Keep  an  intelligent  eye  on  all 
the  others.  It  is  only  by  doing  so  that  you  come  to 
see  what  Art  is :  Art  is  the  end  common  to  them  all ; 
it  is  none  of  the  points  by  which  they  differ  2.  In 
this  age,  beware  of  realism.  3.  In  your  own  art, 
bow  your  head  over  technique.  Think  of  technique 
when  you  rise  and  when  you  go  to  bed.  Forget 
purposes  in  the  meanwhile;  get  to  love  technical 
processes,  to  glory  in  technical  successes ;  get  to  see 
the  world  entirely  through  technical  spectacles,  to 
see  it  entirely  in  terms  of  what  you  can  do.  Then 
when  you  have  anything  to  say,  the  language  will 
be  apt  and  copious." 

This  idealistic  doctrine  leads  us  to  perceive  some- 


tory  to  be  made  of  her  charms!  He  should  have  left  his 
pencil  and  note-book  at  home ;  fixed  his  eye  as  he  walked  with 
a  reverent  attention  on  all  that  surrounds  him,  and  taken  all 
into  a  heart  that  could  understand  and  enjoy.  Afterwards  he 
would  have  discovered  that  while  much  of  what  he  had  ad- 
mired was  preserved  to  him,  much  was  also  most  wisely  ob- 
literated. That  which  remained,  the  picture  surviving  in  his 
mind,  would  have  presented  the  ideal  and  essential  truth  of 
the  scene,  and  done  so  in  large  part  by  discarding  much  which, 
though  in  itself  striking,  was  not  characteristic.  In  every 
scene,  many  of  the  most  brilliant  details  are  but  accidental.' " 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN   93 

thing  of  the  incumbencies  that  are  laid  on  the  man 
who  recognizes  in  himself  this  aim.  And  it  may 
help  us  to  account  for  the  conscious  effort  he  makes 
to  be  sensitive  to  and  to  encompass  a  hundred  pass- 
ing impressions  which  we  more  practical  beings, 
bent  only  on  choosing  the  practical  and  advanta- 
geous, can  neglect.  In  fact,  to  pay  much  attention  to 
those  other  impressions  blinds  us  to  the  real  issues 
and,  as  we  say,  makes  dreamers  or  idlers  of  us  so 
that  we  "get  nowhere." 

This  is  what  world,  family,  and  friends  have  said 
of  many  an  artist  during  his  period  of  vagabondage, 
his  Wanderjahre,  and  it  was  of  course  said  of  Ste- 
venson. He  was  known  and  pointed  out,  he  tells 
us,  for  the  pattern  of  an  idler.  The  modern  world 
does  not  recognize  the  rights  of  any  but  the  success- 
ful artist  to  demand  periods  of  complete  leisure  and 
liberty.  So  in  the  face  of  a  busy  world,  and  for  that 
world's  good,  the  novice  must  often  take  what  it 
would  seem  to  deny  him — the  right  to  look  on  just 
for  the  sake  of  looking  on,  the  right  to  experience 
life  just  for  the  sake  of  the  experience.  He  will  not 
often  defend  his  productive  idleness  in  advance  of 
his  production;  and  the  world  has  no  way  of  dis- 
tinguishing the  seemingly  idle  artist  from  the  ulti- 
mately vain.  The  novice,  knowing  instinctively  that 
it  is  his  task  to  feel  the  whole  of  life  actually  or  in 
imagination,  and  to  feel  it  without  confusion,  finds 
in  his  instinct  the  warrant  for  his  way  of  life.  To 
him  his  idleness  appears  full  and  serious — an  oppor- 
tunity to  note  all  the  contingencies  of  his  experi- 


94  STEVENSON 

ence,  out  of  which  he  must  shortly  produce  a  simple, 
ordered,  and  vivid  picture. 

As  we  have  already  seen  in  "An  Apology  for 
Idlers,"  which  Stevenson  wrote  in  1877  while  idling 
somewhere  between  Barbizon  and  Edinburgh,  he 
understood  how  to  defend  the  morale  of  his  ap- 
prenticeship. If  it  is  after  your  fancy  you  will 
find  more  of  the  same  doctrine  in  "Pan's  Pipes/' 
"Forest  Notes/'  "Walking  Tours,"  and  many  illus- 
trations of  it  in  Travels  with  a  Donkey  and  the  other 
excursions  of  this  period.  "Providence  and  the 
Guitar,"  is  a  story  written  in  its  special  humor. 
"Will  o'  the  Mill"  is  its  more  serious  reflection. 

Stevenson's  fundamental  proposition  is  worth  re- 
curring to  here : 


"If  the  business  of  all  men  is  to  learn  the  art  of 
living,  it  is  especially  that  of  the  artist.  Sainte- 
Beuve,"  says  Stevenson,  "came  to  regard  all  experi- 
ence as  a  single  great  book,  in  which  to  study  for  a 
few  years  ere  we  go  hence ;  and  it  seemed  all  one  to 
him  whether  you  should  read  in  Chapter  XX,  which 
is  the  differential  calculus,  or  in  Chapter  XXXIX, 
which  is  hearing  the  band  play  in  the  gardens.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  an  intelligent  person,  looking  out 
of  his  eyes  and  harkening  in  his  ears,  with  a  smile 
on  his  face  all  the  time,  will  get  more  true  education 
than  many  another  in  a  life  of  heroic  vigils.  There 
is  certainly  some  chill  and  arid  knowledge  to  be 
found  upon  the  summits  of  formal  and  laborious 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN   95 

science;  but  it  is  all  round  about  you,  and  for  the 
trouble  of  looking,  that  you  will  acquire  the  warm 
and  palpitating  facts  of  life." — "Apology  for 
Idlers,"  Virginibus  Puerisque. 


Idleness  does  not  imply  being  lazy.  The  artist 
makes  of  it  the  most  important  thing  he  has  to  do. 
He  can  never  be  vacant,  dull,  negative.  One  day  at 
Mentone,  while  sitting  on  an  olive-clad  slope  behind 
the  town,  Stevenson  had  noticed  how  the  flurries 
of  wind  made  "little  silverings"  over  the  sea  of 
branches  as  the  undersides  of  the  leaves  caught  the 
light.  He  writes  to  Mrs.  Sitwell  that  he  tried  for 
long  to  hit  on  some  language  that  would  give  ever 
so  faintly  this  impression,  "but  the  Muse  was  not 
favorable."  It  may  seem  as  if  this  were  a  particu- 
larly idle  and  trivial  occupation  and  that  he  might 
have  better  devoted  himself  to  the  Horace  which 
he  had  in  his  pocket.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  one  hour 
spent  in  trying  to  solve  personally  one  of  the  prob- 
lems of  composition  can  often  give  more  insight 
into  the  Art  of  Poetry  than  many  hours  of  reading 
in  Horace.  The  problem  was  in  this  case  a  very 
difficult  one.  "Little  silverings,"  as  Stevenson  rec- 
ognized, is  not  the  phrase  to  comprehend  the  im- 
pression. "Hoary  in  the  wind"  some  one  else  has 
suggested;  but  that  does  not  catch  the  shifting  color 
of  the  leaves.  There  are  certain  impressions  of  na- 
ture among  them  the  most  beautiful,  which  have  so 
far  escaped  the  faculties,  the  coordinations,  of  either 


96  STEVENSON 

poet  or  painter ;  and  this  particular  sensation  which 
one  marvels  at  wherever  there  are  olive  trees,  is  one 
of  them.  At  Mentone  it  is  made  of  an  intermingled 
glimmering  of  sun  and  air  and  trees  against  the 
"blue  of  the  sea"  as  Stevenson's  letter  suggests. 
But  if  Stevenson,  like  other  sojourners  on  the 
Riviera,  failed  to  compose  these  elements  so  as  to 
satisfy  the  sensational  memory,  the  attempt  was 
the  kind  of  exercise  that  led  toward  art.  It  was  the 
sort  of  attempt  which  led  him  to  be  successful  in 
many  similar  instances;  which  enabled  him  to  de- 
scribe, for  the  benefit  of  his  favorite  scoundrel, 
Villon,  the  snow  falling  in  the  streets  of  Paris: 
"Flake  after  flake  descended  out  of  the  black  night 
air,  silent,  circuitous,  interminable  .  .  .  the 
whole  city  was  sheeted  up."  Look  at  the  snow 
falling  on  a  still  winter  night  and  see  if  any  other 
elements  will  so  readily  compose  the  picture  for  you. 
"Sheeted  up"  was  a  phrase  he  had  hit  on  several 
years  before  to  describe  snow-fields  in  Carrick.  Take 
another  common  sensation,  the  wind  round  your 
house  on  a  November  night.  What  are  your  words 
for  it?  It  roars,  sobs,  sings,  sighs,  soughs,  rattles, 
and  so  on,  for  you.  For  Stevenson,  writing  casual 
letters  to  his  friends,  it  is  a  "flapping  wind,"  it  is 
a*  horseman  riding  past  with  his  cloak  about  his 
head,  it  is  "the  audible  haunting  of  an  incarnate 
anger  about  the  house";  it  is  a  great  west  wind 
"flapping  above  one  like  an  immense  banner,  and 
every  now  and  then  swooping  furiously  against  my 
windows."    Have  you  ever  thought  of  anything  in 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN   97 

connection  with  the  wind  as  vivid  as  that — "flap- 
ping above  one  like  an  immense  banner"  ? 

Stevenson's  writing  is  full  of  what  we  may  call 
sensations  of  place.  While  basking  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean sun  at  Mentone  his  thoughts  traveled  north- 
ward, "and  many  a  doleful  vignette  of  the  grim 
wintry  streets  at  home  returns  to  him,  and  begins 
to  haunt  his  memory.  The  hopeless,  huddled  atti- 
tude of  tramps  in  doorways;  the  flinching  gait  of 
barefoot  children  on  the  icy  pavement ;  the  sheen  of 
the  rainy  streets  toward  afternoon;  the  meagre 
anatomy  of  the  poor  defined  by  the  clinging  of  wet 
garments;  the  high  canorous  note  of  the  North- 
easter on  days  when  the  very  houses  seem  to  stiffen 
with  cold ;  these,  and  such  as  these,  crowd  back  upon 
him,  and  mockingly  substitute  themselves  for  the 
fanciful  winter  scenes  with  which  he  had  pleased 
himself  awhile  before."  ("Ordered  South,"  Vir- 
ginibus  Puerisque. )  That  is  Edinburgh,  the  north- 
ern town,  the  picture  of  winter  chill.  I  recall  my 
own  first  impression  of  that  city,  one  September 
evening,  while  I  was  standing  at  a  windy  corner  of 
High  Street  looking  down  on  the  town  and  far 
across  to  the  widening  Forth.  My  guide-book  under 
my  arm,  or  the  friend  at  my  elbow,  had  told  me 
that  Edinburgh  is  the  most  picturesque  city  in 
Europe.  But  at  that  moment  I  saw  beyond  the 
possibility  of  any  words  which  one  ordinarily  has 
at  his  command;  and  that  moment  remained  long 
in  memory,  vivid,  haunting,  and  quite  inarticulate. 
I  made  no  effort  to  reduce  it  to  words.    I  felt  sim- 


98  STEVENSON 

ply  that  I  had  seen  Edinburgh,  its  history,  its  ro- 
mance. Once  at  a  concert,  a  piece  of  music  by 
Chopin  revived  the  impression  sharply;  but  it  was 
not  till  I  came  across  a  sentence  of  Stevenson's, 
years  later,  that  I  knew,  as  we  say,  what  I  had 
seen.  It  was  "the  gloom  of  high-lying,  old  stone 
cities,  imminent  on  the  windy  seaboard."  For  me 
that  was  instantly  the  composition  of  my  memory. 
A  writer  does  not  do  many  such  things  for  one  so 
simply  and  finally,  without  there  being  in  his  mind 
the  recurrent  purpose  of  seeing  and  arranging  the  es- 
sential elements  in  every  phase  of  his  surroundings. 
It  is  thus  a  purpose  by  which  the  casual  continually 
becomes,  or  is  constrained  to  be,  of  practical  import. 
In  Stevenson's  case,  though  his  writing  suffers  from 
a  certain  attendant  self -consciousness  and  other  ob- 
vious dangers,  this  purpose  is  none  the  less  the 
source  of  his  facility  and  his  power. 

Stevenson's  letters  during  this  period,  especially 
those  to  Mrs.  Sitwell,  are  full  of  his  interest  in 
casual  and  passing  scenes — genre  pictures  of  the 
streets;  brief  vivid  notes  on  the  conditions  of  na- 
ture about  him;  the  effects  of  weather  (there  is 
always  a  great  deal  about  clouds  and  wind  in  his 
letters) ;  the  trees  and  flowers.  He  is  a  thorough- 
going impressionist — there  is  always  the  general 
atmosphere  and  out  of  it  one  or  two  salient  details 
obtruding.  Whether  it  is  a  chill,  foggy  day  in 
Edinburgh  that  strikes  his  attention,  or  Avignon 
and  its  old  bridge  in  a  glare  of  sun,  it  is  very  apt 
to  be  formed  into  a  picture  in  much  the  same  way 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN   99 

that    a    painter    of    the    Barbizon    school    would 
form  it.1 

In  his  letters  these  things  afford  glimpses  of  his 
natural,  spontaneous  imagination.  But  the  same 
impetus,  carried  too  far,  led  him  to  write  a  series 
of  longish  "fragments"  commemorating  various 
little  tours  he  made  on  foot — "Cockermouth  and 
Keswick,"  "An  Autumn  Effect,"  "A  Winter's  Walk 
in  Carrick  and  Galloway."  They  resemble  chiefly 
the  sketches  of  a  painter  before  he  knows  just  what 
he  wants  to  do.  They  are  interesting  chiefly  in  re- 
lation to  some  final  result.  But  in  Stevenson's  case 
there  is  no  specific  final  result,  and  hence  they  re- 
main mere  tours  de  force.  Yet  how  much  oftener 
does  greatness  in  creative  art  grow  out  of  the 
vagaries  of  a  youth  who  is  bent  on  climbing  high 
by  constant  experiment  than  out  of  the  little  wis- 
dom of  him  who  learns  early  a  successful  method 
of  securing  what  is  on  a  level  with  his  nose ! 


1  For   illustration,   see  his  Letters,   Biographical   Edition, 
Vol.  I,  pp.  75,  84,  93,  103,  110,  129. 


CHAPTER  VI 

VAGABONDAGE  AND  CRAFTSMANSHIP :  BARBIZON 


STEVENSON,  who  in  many  respects  of  his  art 
never  matured,  was  always  an  experimentalist. 
Though  he  became,  as  Mr.  Copeland  has  said  in  his 
essay  on  Stevenson,1  "perfect  on  the  page,"  the 
page,  in  relation  to  the  whole,  is  often  fragmentary. 
In  many  of  Stevenson's  productions  of  this  time  and 
later,  productions  which  lack  sweep  and  compre- 
hensiveness, there  is  only  this  kind  of  piecemeal 
perfection.  No  author  who  has  written  so  many 
quotable  passages  has  written  so  few  great  books. 
In  the  essay  and  in  the  short  tale,  his  best  qualities, 
which  are  those  of  fine  workmanship  rather  than  of 
large  structure,  shine.  In  a  small  compass  they 
can  not  diffuse  themselves.  Work  of  which  he 
could  see  the  end  and  the  shape  when  he  began  it, 
he  could  properly  fill  out.  But  the  very  qualities 
that  led  to  success  on  the  page  seem  rather  to  have 

1  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  April,  1895.  Mr.  Hammerton,  the 
editor  of  that  most  interesting  volume,  Stevensoniana,  quotes 
this  essay  at  some  length,  and  regards  it  very  properly,  in  the 
present  writer's  opinion,  as  the  best  single  essay  on  Steven- 
son's art. 

100 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN  101 

blinded  him  to  the  cause  of  failure  in  many  of  his 
longer  books. 

Critically,  Stevenson  understood  the  broader 
functions  of  the  novelist's  art.  This  is  evident  from 
his  extreme  devotion  to  Meredith  and  from  his  ad- 
miration of  Hugo,  two  authors  who  together  in- 
clude nearly  all  the  positive  virtues  that  he  lacked. 
Yet,  though  he  describes  in  his  essay  on  Hugo  the 
dominating  moral  and  artistic  forces  of  that  writer 
as  they  combine  to  emphasize  each  other  and  make 
one  purpose,  Stevenson  himself  but  rarely  suc- 
ceeds in  that  aim  of  all  true  art.  In  The  Master  of 
Ballantrae,  for  example,  you  follow  him  for  a  cer- 
tain number  of  pages  in  surprise  at  his  vivid  eye 
and  at  what  seems  a  carefully  suspended  plot.  Then 
you  begin  to  doubt  if  he  knows  just  what  he  is 
doing  it  all  for.  At  the  end  you  are  convinced  that 
he  never  had  a  real  plan — only  a  vivid  fancy  which 
flashes  here  and  there,  and  which,  so  far  as  illumina- 
tion of  the  whole  is  concerned,  grows  dimmer. 

In  possible  explanation  of  this,  I  think  it  should 
be  noted  once  more  that  during  several  crucial  years, 
Stevenson  was  too  strongly  affected  by  the  influence 
of  Barbizon  and  the  methods  of  the  painter.  A 
painter  needs  much  practise  here  and  there  in  the  de- 
tails of  composition  in  order  to  secure  manual  apt- 
ness ;  but  mental  aptness  is  what  the  writer  is  after, 
and  that  is  properly  secured  by  pursuing  some  defi- 
nite and  important  end  to  which  observation,  or 
sketching,  is  but  contributory.  Of  this  Barbizon  in- 
fluence, "Forest  Notes"  is  the  most  direct  result.  It  is 


102  STEVENSON 

a  series  of  charming  sketches  composed  in  the  forest 
of  Fontainebleau  itself  or  at  Siron's  Inn  (now  the 
Hotel  de  l'Exposition),  that  favorite  and  most  con- 
genially Bohemian  resting  place  of  all  Stevenson's 
vagabondage.  A  person  who  walks  across  the  for- 
est from  Fontainebleau  to  Barbizon  may  make  a 
curious  study  in  contrast.  The  palace  of  Fontaine- 
bleau, one  of  the  most  tritely  and  formally  arranged 
palaces  in  France,  filled  with  the  vapid  gilt  and 
porcelain  conventions  of  her  chief  period  of 
outward  splendor;  the  park,  swept,  clipped,  geo- 
metrically perfect  and  in  all  its  details  the  exact 
counterpart  of  an  exercise  by  a  garden  poet — these 
stand  on  one  side  of  the  forest  as  monuments  of 
splendid,  decorative  order.  On  the  other  side,  at  a 
morning's  walk,  is  Siron's  Inn  and  Barbizon.  Here 
everything  is  irregular,  rambling,  full  of  promiscu- 
ous vines  and  flowers.  Siron's  Inn  is  as  far  a  cry 
from  the  palace  of  Fontainebleau  as  can  be 
imagined. 

"Siron's  Inn,  that  excellent  artists'  barrack,  was 
managed  upon  easy  principles.  At  any  hour  of  the 
night,  when  you  returned  from  wandering  in  the 
forest,  you  went  to  the  billiard-room  and  helped 
yourself  to  liquors,  or  descended  to  the  cellar  and 
returned  laden  with  beer  or  wine.  The  Sirons  were 
all  locked  in  slumber;  there  was  none  to  check  your 
inroads;  only  at  the  week's  end  a  computation  was 
made,  the  gross  sum  was  divided,  and  a  varying 
share  set  down  to  every  lodger's  name  under  the 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN  103 

rubric  estrats.  Upon  the  more  long-suffering  the 
larger  tax  was  levied;  and  your  bill  lengthened  in 
a  direct  proportion  to  the  easiness  of  your  disposi- 
tion. At  any  hour  of  the  morning,  again,  you 
could  get  your  coffee,  or  cold  milk,  and  set  forth 
into  the  forest.  The  doves  had  perhaps  wakened 
you,  fluttering  into  your  very  chamber;  and  on  the 
threshold  of  the  inn  you  were  met  by  the  aroma  of 
the  forest.  Close  by  were  the  great  aisles,  the 
mossy  boulders,  the  interminable  field  of  forest 
shadow.  There  you  were  free  to  dream  and  wan- 
der. And  at  noon,  and  again  at  six  o'clock,  a  good 
meal  awaited  you  on  Siron's  table.  The  whole  of 
your  accommodation,  set  aside  that  varying  item 
of  the  estrats,  cost  you  five  francs  a  day;  your  bill 
was  never  offered  you  until  you  asked  it;  and  if 
you  were  out  of  luck's  way,  you  might  depart  for 
where  you  pleased  and  leave  it  pending. — "Fon- 
tainebleau,"  Across  the  Plains. 

In  spite  of  his  sketcher's  method  which  led  him, 
as  he  says,  to  get  ready  his  own  palette  "and  lay 
out  the  color  for  a  woodland  scene  in  words,"  in 
spite  of  its  being,  that  is,  nothing  more  than  a  series 
of  drawings  of  trees,  boulders,  glades,  bosquets 
tenebreux,  d.  set  of  themes  on  "The  Woods  by 
Night,"  "Siron's  Inn,"  "The  Woods  in  March," 
"The  Freedom  of  the  Woods"  and  so  on,  "Forest 
Notes"  reproduces  a  total  effect  of  marvelous  actu- 
ality. I  walked  across  the  forest  one  day  a  few 
years  ago.    It  has  a  character  all  its  own;  I  have 


104  STEVENSON 

never  had  the  same  forest  impressions  anywhere 
else;  and  it  seemed  to  me  precisely,  and  in  all  its 
variety,  the  forest  of  Stevenson's  sketches.  This 
would  be,  according  to  the  principles  of  Barbizon, 
a  crowning  word  of  praise;  but  description  for  its 
own  sake  may  scarcely  be  an  end  in  literature. 
One  of  Stevenson's  favorite  authors  of  this  period, 
George  Borrow,  might  have  taught  him  that;  for 
Borrow  always  has  in  view  some  kind  of  arrival  in 
his  wanderings.  But  Stevenson  has  here  little  con- 
tinuity other  than  that  of  his  own  footsteps.  He 
disclaims  any  other.  He  winds  up  his  disquisition 
with  a  section  called  "Morality,"  the  gist  of  which 
is  that  in  the  forest,  in  this  retired  realm  of  art, 
there  can  be  no  morality,  for  everything  there  is 
but  part  of  a  picture.  This  is  a  moral  which  might 
tag  all  of  Stevenson's  "Wanderjahre." 

It  is  part  of  Stevenson's  nature  and  part  of  his 
rather  vagabond  art  that  he  always  held  to  this 
point  of  view.  "He  enjoyed  a  strenuous  idleness 
full  of  visions."  He  says  in  "Fontainebleau"  that 
to  prate  to  the  novice  about  the  lofty  aims  and 
moral  influence  of  art  is  the  lad's  ruin.  "The  love 
of  words  and  not  a  desire  to  publish  new  discoveries, 
the  love  of  form  and  not  a  novel  reading  of  his- 
torical events,  mark  the  vocation  of  the  writer  and 
the  painter.  The  arabesque,  properly  speaking,  and 
even  in  literature,  is  the  first  fancy  of  the  artist; 
he  first  plays  with  his  material  as  a  child  plays  with 
a  kaleidoscope ;  and  he  is  already  in  a  second  stage 
when  he  begins  to  use  his  pretty  counters  for  the 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN  105 

end  of  representation.  In  that,  he  must  pause  long 
and  toil  faithfully;  that  is  his  apprenticeship;  and 
it  is  only  the  few  who  will  really  grow  beyond  it 
and  go  forward,  fully  equipped,  to  do  the  business 
of  real  art — to  give  life  to  abstractions  and  sig- 
nificance and  charm  to  facts.  In  the  meanwhile, 
let  him  dwell  much  among  his  fellow-craftsmen. 
They  alone  can  take  a  serious  interest  in  the  childish 
tasks  and  pitiful  successes  of  these  years.  They 
alone  can  behold  with  equanimity  this  fingering  of 
the  dumb  keyboard,  this  polishing  of  empty  sen- 
tences, this  dull  and  literal  painting  of  dull  and 
insignificant  subjects.  Outsiders  will  spur  him  on. 
They  will  say,  'Why  do  you  not  write  a  great  book, 
paint  a  great  picture?'  If  his  guardian  angel  fail 
him,  they  may  even  persuade  him  to  the  attempt, 
and,  ten  to  one,  his  hand  is  coarsened  and  his  style 
falsified  for  life." — "Fontainebleau,"  Across  the 
Plains. 

The  danger  of  all  this  Stevenson  himself  well 
understood,  and,  as  I  have  remarked  and  shall  point 
out  later  in  regard  to  his  production  as  a  whole,  he 
himself  suffered  from  the  disease  which  he  here 
goes  on  to  describe.  "And  this  brings  me  to  a  warn- 
ing. The  life  of  the  apprentice  to  any  art  is  both 
unstrained  and  pleasing ;  it  is  strewn  with  small  suc- 
cesses in  the  midst  of  a  career  of  failure,  patiently 
supported;  the  heaviest  scholar  is  conscious  of  a 
certain  progress;  and  if  he  come  not  appreciably 
nearer  to  the  art  of  Shakespeare,  grows  letter-per- 


106  STEVENSON 

feet  in  the  domain  of  A-B,  ab.  But  the  time  comes 
when  a  man  should  cease  prelusory  gymnastic,  stand 
up,  put  a  violence  upon  his  will,  and  for  better  or 
worse,  begin  the  business  of  creation.  This  evil 
day  there  is  a  tendency  continually  to  postpone; 
above  all  with  painters.  They  have  made  so  many 
studies  that  it  has  become  a  habit ;  they  make  more, 
the  walls  of  exhibitions  blush  with  them;  and  death 
finds  these  aged  students  still  busy  with  their  horn- 
book. This  class  of  man  finds  a  congenial  home  in 
artist  villages;  in  the  slang  of  the  English  colony 
at  Barbizon  we  used  to  call  them  'Snoozers.'  Con- 
tinual returns  to  the  city,  the  society  of  men  farther 
advanced,  the  study  of  great  works,  a  sense  of 
humour,  or,  if  such  a  thing  is  to  be  had,  a  little  re- 
ligion or  philosophy,  are  the  means  of  treatment. 
It  will  be  time  enough  to  think  of  curing  the  malady 
after  it  has  been  caught ;  for  to  catch  it  is  the  very 
thing  for  which  you  seek  that  dream-land  of  the 
painters'  village." — "Fontainebleau,"  Across  the 
Plains. 


II 


The  influence  of  this  fashion  of  observing  life 
through  the  half-shut  eye,  together  with  what  Ste- 
venson calls  a  "disinterested  love  of  dullness,"  is 
felt  a  little  too  largely  in  Stevenson's  first  book, 
An  Inland  Voyage,  a  pleasant  diary  of  an  unexciting 
canoe  trip,  in  August,  1876,  with  Sir  Walter  Simp- 
son, from  Antwerp  through  the  Sambre  Canal  and 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN  107 

down  the  Oise  nearly  to  the  Seine,  as  far  as  Pon- 
toise.  Stevenson  later  speaks  of  the  book  as  "not 
badly  written,  thin,  mildly  cheery  and  strained." 
It  is  obviously  written  for  the  sake  of  style,  which 
leads  him  to  make  much  out  of  little  and  to  "paint." 
But  for  all  that,  it  is  a  pleasant  diversion.  When 
you  finish  it  you  have  been  to  France  again,  talked 
with  her  people,  played  with  her  children,  put  up 
at  her  inns,  and  eaten  of  her  food  or  gone  hungry, 
always  in  the  most  companionable  manner.  Steven- 
son's journeys  are  always  confidential,  full  of  him- 
self and  without  one  touch  of  conceit.  The  joke,  if 
there  is  one,  is  on  the  writer,  who,  though  gallant  at 
heart  and  fond  of  glowing  words,  never  cuts  too 
fine  a  figure  on  his  own  stage.  Most  of  us,  to  our- 
selves, are  rather  awkward  failures ;  and  every  man 
can  find  his  points  of  sympathy  with  Stevenson,  who 
does  not  pose  as  one  of  the  world's  strong,  proud, 
successful  products. 

You  must  imagine  him  at  this  time  extremely 
thin,  one  hundred  sixteen  pounds,  with  something 
rather  unearthly  in  his  face  and  eyes,  a  little  more 
than  usually  absurd  in  his  accoutrement,  a  velvet 
jacket  and  cap,  a  red  sash  with  a  knife  stuck  through 
it  for  bravado.  Nearly  everywhere  he  was  the 
game  of  children  of  whom  he  pretends  to  be 
abnormally  fearful,  though  he  records  one  occasion 
of  triumph  over  them:  "They  could  not  make 
enough  of  my  red  sash,"  he  says  of  some  inquisitive 
youngsters  along  the  Sambre;  "and  my  knife  filled 
them  with  awe."    In  spite  of  the  solid  respectability 


108  STEVENSON 

of  Sir  Walter  Simpson,  the  pair  were  refused  ad- 
mittance at  several  inns.  In  others  they  were 
snubbed  as  pedlers.  Stevenson  says  that  though 
a  born  British  subject,  he  never  succeeded  in  con- 
vincing a  single  foreign  official  of  his  nationality. 
"For  the  life  of  me  I  cannot  understand  it.  I,  too, 
have  been  knolled  to  church  and  sat  at  good  men's 
feasts,  but  I  bear  no  mark  of  it.  I  am  as  strange 
as  a  Jack  Indian  to  their  official  spectacles.  I  might 
come  from  any  part  of  the  globe,  it  seems,  except 
from  where  I  do."  But  he  was  not  speaking  the 
literal  truth  when  he  said  he  could  not  understand 
it.  In  fact  he  was  rather  fond  of  explaining  it. 
To  a  friend  who  asked  for  a  photograph,  he  wrote : 
"When  I  get  one  you  shall  have  a  copy.  It  will 
not  be  like  me ;  sometimes  I  turn  out  a  capital,  fresh 
bank  clerk;  once  I  came  out  the  image  of  Run j eel 
Singh ;  again  a  treacherous  sun  has  fixed  me  in  the 
character  of  a  traveling  evangelist.  .  .  .  The 
truth  is  I  have  no  appearance;  a  certain  air  of  dis- 
reputability  is  one  constant  character  that  my  face 
presents ;  the  rest  change  like  water.  But  still  I  am 
lean,  and  still  disreputable."  In  another  sort  of  con- 
fession made  somewhat  later,  when  he  may  have 
been  a  wiser,  though  by  no  means  a  sadder  man,  he 
describes  his  attire.  It  was  on  the  tramp  which  he 
and  Sir  Walter  Simpson  took  in  the  valley  of  the 
Loing  the  following  year — the  epilogue  to  An  In- 
land Voyage.  He  was,  he  says,  unwisely  dressed. 
That  is,  he  had  on  an  old,  tarnished  smoking-cap 
of  Indian  work,  a  black  flannel  shirt  and  other 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN  109 

rather  curious  misfits.  The  result — his  arrest  and 
imprisonment  as  a  vagrant  by  the  commissary  of 
Chatillon-sur- Loire — is  the  example  supreme  of  Ste- 
vensonian  adventure  and  should  be  read  by  every- 
body for  himself  in  the  "Epilogue." 

But  before  that,  one  rainy  night  at  La  Fere  on 
the  Oise,  and  at  other  less  respectable  places,  no 
doubt,  Stevenson  had  suffered.  It  was  not  entirely 
for  the  sake  of  literature.  He  and  Sir  Walter  had 
stowed  their  boats  by  the  river  and  were  proceeding 
toward  La  Fere  on  foot. 

"At  last  a  second  gateway  admitted  us  to  the 
town  itself.  Lighted  windows  looked  gladsome, 
,  whiffs  of  comfortable  cookery  came  abroad  upon 
the  air.  The  town  was  full  of  the  military  reserve, 
out  for  the  French  Autumn  manoeuvres,  and  the 
reservists  walked  speedily  and  wore  their  formidable 
greatcoats.  It  was  a  fine  night  to  be  within  doors 
over  dinner  and  hear  the  rain  upon  the  windows. 

"The  Cigarette  and  I  could  not  sufficiently  con- 
gratulate each  other  on  the  prospect,  for  we  had 
been  told  there  was  a  capital  inn  at  La  Fere.  Such 
a  dinner  as  we  were  going  to  eat !  such  beds  as  we 
were  to  sleep  in !  and  all  the  while  the  rain  raining 
on  houseless  folk  over  all  the  poplared  country-side. 
It  made  our  mouths  water.  The  inn  bore  the  name 
of  some  woodland  animal,  stag,  or  hart,  or  hind,  I 
forget  which.  But  I  shall  never  forget  how  spa- 
cious and  how  eminently  habitable  it  looked  as  we 
drew  near.    The  carriage  entry  was  lighted  up,  not 


110  STEVENSON 

by  intention,  but  from  the  mere  superfluity  of  fire 
and  candle  in  the  house.  A  rattle  of  many  dishes 
came  to  our  ears;  we  sighted  a  great  field  of  table- 
cloth; the  kitchen  glowed  like  a  forge  and  smelt 
like  a  garden  of  things  to  eat. 

"Into  this,  the  inmost  shrine  and  physiological 
heart  of  a  hostelry,  with  all  its  furnaces  in  action 
and  all  its  dressers  charged  with  viands,  you  are 
now  to  suppose  us  making  our  triumphal  entry,  a 
pair  of  damp  rag-and-bone  men,  each  with  a  limp 
india-rubber  bag  upon  his  arm.  I  do  not  believe  I 
have  a  sound  view  of  that  kitchen ;  I  saw  it  through 
a  sort  of  glory,  but  it  seemed  to  me  crowded  with 
the  snowy  caps  of  cookmen,  who  all  turned  round 
from  their  saucepans  and  looked  at  us  with  sur- 
prise. There  was  no  doubt  about  the  landlady, 
however ;  there  she  was,  heading  her  army,  a  flushed, 
angry  woman,  full  of  affairs.  Her  I  asked  politely — 
too  politely,  thinks  the  Cigarette — if  we  could  have 
beds,  she  surveying  us  coldly  from  head  to  foot. 

"  'You  will  find  beds  in  the  suburb,'  she  remarked. 
'We  are  too  busy  for  the  like  of  you/ 

"If  we  could  make  an  entrance,  change  our 
clothes,  and  order  a  bottle  of  wine,  I  felt  sure  we 
could  put  things  right;  so  said  I,  'If  we  cannot 
sleep,  we  may  at  least  dine' — and  was  for  depositing 
my  bag. 

"What  a  terrible  convulsion  of  nature  was  that 
which  followed  in  the  landlady's  face!  She  made 
a  run  at  us  and  stamped  her  foot. 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN  111 

"  'Out  with  you — out  of  the  door!'  she  screeched. 
e  Sortez,  sortez,  sortez  par  la  port  el* 

"I  do  not  know  how  it  happened,  but  next  mo- 
ment we  were  out  in  the  rain  and  darkness,  and  I 
was  cursing  before  the  carriage  like  a  disappointed 
mendicant.  Where  were  the  boating-men  of  Bel- 
gium? where  the  judge  and  his  good  wines?  and 
where  the  graces  of  Origny?  Black,  black  was  the 
night  after  the  firelit  kitchen,  but  what  was  that 
to  the  blackness  in  our  heart?  This  was  not  the 
first  time  that  I  have  been  refused  a  lodging.  Often 
and  often  have  I  planned  what  I  should  do  if  such 
a  misadventure  happened  to  me  again.  And  nothing 
is  easier  to  plan.  But  to  put  in  execution,  with  the 
heart  boiling  at  the  indignity?  Try  it;  try  it  only 
once,  and  tell  me  what  you  did. 

"It  is  all  very  fine  to  talk  about  tramps  and 
morality.  Six  hours  of  police  surveillance  (such 
as  I  have  had)  or  one  brutal  rejection  from  an  inn 
door  change  your  views  upon  the  subject  like  a 
course  of  lectures.  As  long  as  you  keep  in  the 
upper  regions,  with  the  world  bowing  to  you  as 
you  go,  social  arrangements  have  a  very  handsome 
air;  but  once  get  under  the  wheels  and  you  wish 
society  were  at  the  devil.  I  will  give  most  respect- 
able men  a  fortnight  of  such  a  life,  and  then  I  will 
offer  them  twopence  for  what  remains  of  their 
morality. 

"For  my  part,  when  I  was  turned  out  of  the  Stag, 
or  the  Hind,  or  whatever  it  was,  I  would  have  set 


112  STEVENSON 

the  temple  of  Diana  on  fire  if  it  had  been  handy." 
— An  Inland  Voyage. 

Stevenson  has  recorded  that  he  was  once  a  red- 
hot  theoretical  socialist  and  that  he  had  no  regrets 
in  looking  back  on  that  period  of  his  life.  He  was 
all  his  life  the  right  kind  of  practical  every-day  so- 
cialist; and  such  experiences  as  his  absurd  costume 
made  him  liable  to  were  not  without  their  value. 
Yet  at  this  time  he  was  intent  on  romance  and  in- 
dividualism rather  than  on  social  uniformity.  He 
liked  to  imagine,  as  he  records  in  the  "Epilogue," 
that  he  resembled  his  vagabond  scamp,  Francois 
Villon.  Perhaps  he  did — in  the  scamp's  few  ami- 
able traits.  At  all  events,  this  outward  defiance  of 
convention — and  it  is  a  very  queer  queerness  that 
is  refused  admittance  to  a  French  inn — really  re- 
flects his  true  state  of  mind.  If  An  Inland  Voyage 
has  a  secondary  purpose  in  addition  to  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  day's  journey,  it  is  to  record  Stevenson's 
conviction  that  respectability,  regularity,  a  pro- 
fessional career,  an  office  chair,  and  the  like, 
were  now  beyond  the  pale  of  possibility  for  him. 
Against  them  he  poses  the  Arethusa  and  her 
swaggerish  independence.  What  is  worth  while  in 
life?  For  the  artist  is  it  not  to  note  the  turns  of  a 
river,  the  meadows  and  orchards,  the  margins  of 
sedge,  the  cattle  hanging  their  mild  heads  over  the 
embankment,  and  a  sleepy  passing  barge  decorated 
with  pots  of  flowers?  "I  am  sure  I  would  rather 
be  a  bargee  than  occupy  any  position  under  Heaven 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN  113 

that  requires  attendance  at  an  office,"  cries  Stevenson 
at  the  beginning  of  the  book.  "There  are  few  call- 
ings, I  should  like  to  say,  where  a  man  gives  up  less 
of  his  liberty  in  return  for  regular  meals."  Always 
full  of  fanciful  humors  and  romantic  purposeless- 
ness,  he  seems  to  have  most  enjoyed  little  incidents 
of  the  merely  casual  sort.  Handkerchiefs  waved 
from  a  garden  by  the  river  caused  quite  a  stir  of 
heart.  "And  yet,"  he  says,  "how  we  should  have 
wearied  and  despised  each  other,  these  girls  and  I, 
if  we  had  been  introduced  at  a  croquet  party!  But 
this  is  a  fashion  I  love:  to  kiss  the  hand  or  wave 
a  handkerchief  to  people  I  shall  never  see  again, 
to  play  with  possibility,  and  knock  in  a  peg  for 
fancy  to  hang  upon.  It  gives  the  traveler  a  jog, 
reminds  him  that  he  is  not  a  traveler  everywhere, 
and  that  his  journey  is  no  more  than  a  siesta  by  the 
way  on  the  real  march  of  life." 


Ill 


It  was  at  the  end  of  this  voyage,  I  believe,  that 
Stevenson,  on  repairing  to  Barbizon  and  Grez,  found 
a  much  more  serious  affair  on  the  real  march  of 
life  than  any  he  had  yet  encountered.  Mrs.  Os- 
bourne,  a  California  woman  who  had  been  for  some 
time  separated  from  her  husband,  was  spending  a 
few  years  in  France  for  the  education  of  her  chil- 
dren. In  August,  1876,  she  was  amusing  herself 
with  a  little  sketching  in  the  forest  of  Fontainebleau. 
She  and  Stevenson  at  once  fell  in  love.    With  ro- 


114  STEVENSON 

mance  there  came,  as  always,  a  practical  problem — 
in  this  case  peculiarly  harassing  and  difficult.  The 
uncertainty  of  Stevenson's  health,  the  uncertainty 
of  his  finances,  the  uncertainty  of  Mrs.  Osbourne's 
own  problem,  made  a  continually  renewed  strain 
which  rendered  him  more  than  ever  susceptible  to 
a  return  of  his  physical  troubles.  At  the  same  time 
he  increased  his  efforts  to  prove  himself  financially 
equal  to  the  situation;  and  in  1878  he  earned  enough 
from  his  pen  to  give  him  some  warrant  for  the  de- 
cision which  he  wished  to  make.  Moreover,  his 
trip  through  the  Cevennes,  in  September  and  Octo- 
ber of  that  year,  which  furnished  him  with  the 
materials  for  his  Travels  with  a  Donkey,  must  have 
shown  him  that  he  had  gained  much  in  powers  of 
observation.  Though  the  book  is  in  the  same  man- 
ner as  An  Inland  Voyage,  it  contains  far  more 
reflection  on  life  and  more  interest  in  the  make-up 
of  the  community  through  which  he  traveled. 
The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  fragment  about 
Le  Monastir,  "A  Mountain  Town  in  France," 
the  place  from  which  he  started  on  the  excursion 
with  "Modeste."  It  may  be  said  that  these  two 
productions  introduce  us  to  the  man  who  is  shortly 
to  write  The  Amateur  Emigrant  and  Across  the 
Plains.  Like  those  remarkable  and  genuine  studies 
of  life,  they  prove  that  Stevenson  had  learned  to 
give  the  notes  of  his  sketch-book  a  durable  impor- 
tance. Many  events  were  teaching  him  to  see  life 
more  deeply. 

In   the   autumn   of    1878,    Mrs.    Osbourne    re- 


VAGABOND  AND  CRAFTSMAN  115 

turned  to  America,  and  for  a  few  weeks  re- 
joined her  husband  in  Indianapolis,  their  native 
town ;  but  they  separated  once  more,  and  she  went 
on  to  California.  She  was  seriously  ill  there  during 
the  winter.  In  the  summer  of  1879  she  found  that 
she  could  probably  secure  a  divorce ;  and  Stevenson 
no  longer  hesitated  as  to  what  his  course  should  be. 
He  engaged  passage  on  an  emigrant  ship  from 
Glasgow.  In  regard  to  such  a  step  the  disapproval 
of  his  parents  was  a  foregone  conclusion.  They 
were  not  consulted ;  and  his  father,  for  a  time,  was 
inclined  to  put  the  worst  construction  on  his  son's 
conduct.  No  doubt  the  author  of  the  productions 
of  1878  felt  some  confidence  in  his  powers  to  face 
the  world  alone.  But  he  could  not  count  on  health. 
His  health  at  once  belied  him  and  made  the  next 
twelve  months'  experience  matter  for  an  epic  of 
hardship. 


CHAPTER  VII 


THE   FIRST   GREAT   ADVENTURE 


FOR  a  strong  and  healthy  man  what  Stevenson 
now  attempted  would  have  proved  a  task  with 
failure  always  imminent  and  the  very  possibility  of 
success  doubtful.  For  a  man  in  Stevenson's  condi- 
tion, it  meant,  from  the  start,  skirting  the  edge  of 
tragedy.  This  fact  is  cheerfully  accepted  in  the 
pages  of  The  Amateur  Emigrant  and  Across  the 
Plains,  and  it  is  not  by  any  means  forgotten  in 
The  Silverado  Squatters.  It  seems  as  if  interest  in 
life  alone  kept  Stevenson  alive  during  this  year  in 
America.  For  that  never  failed — that  tremendous 
curiosity  regarding  all  the  circumstances  about  him, 
that  interest  in  humanity  which  prevented  his  ever 
taking  a  morbid  or  negative  view  of  any  situation. 

The  sea  voyage  from  Glasgow  to  New  York  on 
the  Devonia,  while  he  was  playing  his  part  of  ama- 
teur emigrant,  agreed  with  him  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  what  he  calls  "the  national  disease"  was  to  all 
appearances  definitely  setting  in.  But  the  ten-day 
journey  across  the  continent  as  a  second-class  pas- 
senger in  the  heat  and  dust  of  August  was  one  of 

116 


THE    FIRST    GREAT    ADVENTURE     117 

his  great  mistakes  and  a  risk  he  really  had  no  right 
to  run.  With  the  strain  and  the  bad  nourishment  of 
travel,  his  disease  of  the  lungs,  whatever  its  exact 
character  may  have  been,  gathered  such  headway 
that  he  arrived  in  California  with  his  health,  for 
the  time  being,  and  when  he  most  needed  it,  com- 
pletely wrecked. 

But  the  account  of  his  journey  is  a  classic.  It  is 
the  best  of  all  his  narratives  of  travel.  It  differs 
especially  from  the  previous  books  in  the  change 
of  emphasis  from  scenery  and  merely  picturesque 
impressions  to  humanity  and  social  ideas.  He  is  here 
no  longer  trying  to  be  a  painter ;  or  rather  he  is  not 
content  to  be  a  mere  observer.  The  attitude  of  the 
tourist  has  vanished.  Every  one  who  wishes  to 
see  what  sort  of  man  Stevenson's  buffeting  with  the 
world  had  made  of  him  should  read  Mrs.  Steven- 
son's preface  to  The  Amateur  Emigrant.  Indeed 
the  finest,  and  I  think  the  truest,  picture  of  R.  L.  S. 
exists  in  her  contributions  to  the  volumes  of  The 
Biographical  Edition;  and  this  particular  preface, 
with  the  succeeding  pages  of  the  narrative  itself, 
makes  a  fundamental  document  for  understanding 
his  social  point  of  view  about  life. 

The  book  describes  that  most  interesting  of  all 
scenes,  the  gradual  drawing  together  and  establish- 
ment of  relations  of  a  fixed  group  of  people,  previ- 
ously strangers,  aboard  a  passenger  ship.  Coming 
out  of  the  Clyde  all  are  looking  askance  at  one  an- 
other. Especially  among  the  Englishmen  distance 
and  suspicion  prevail.     A   day  later,   on  leaving 


118  STEVENSON 

Lough  Foyle,  the  company  begins  "to  draw  together 
by  inscrutable  magnetisms."  Formalities  obtrude 
less  and  less.  Natural  curiosity,  or  what  Anglo- 
Saxons  prefer  to  call  social  instinct,  begins  to  mod- 
ify arbitrary  relations,  till,  in  New  York  harbor, 
these  people  have  become  human  and  comprehen- 
sible. Stevenson's  interest  in  this  process  is  not 
abstract.  There  is  no  generalizing  talk  about  "the 
steerage"  and  "emigration"  which  does  not  reflect 
intimacy  with  particular  individuals  in  the  problem. 
Stevenson  is  not  an  expert  in  sociology;  but  he  is 
never  quite  at  fault  in  his  theories.  He  limits  himself 
largely  to  what  he  sees.  His  observations  are  hu- 
man and  artistic,  not  economic.  Yet  such  economic 
questions  as  why  the  emigrant  leaves  home,  what 
he  expects  to  find  in  a  new  country,  what  typical 
incapacities  have  displanted  him  and  made  him 
merely  a  part  of  the  great  western-setting  tide, 
what  energies  of  his  nature  drive  him  forward;  all 
these  matters  are  personally  involved  in  this  story 
of  Stevenson's  relations  with  his  fellow  passengers. 
No  matter  how  many  times  the  reader  has  crossed 
the  ocean,  and,  looking  down,  or  even  descending 
daily,  to  the  levels  of  the  steerage,  has  thought  of 
the  problems  that  rise  in  that  atmosphere,  he  will 
find  that  Stevenson  has  been  there  before  him  and 
seen  them  more  sharply  and  more  genuinely,  not  as 
facts  of  social  science,  but  as  personal  experiences. 
For  on  the  promenade  deck  your  point  of  view  will 
never  lead  to  certain  bits  of  wisdom  which  this 
unique  opportunity  of  the  steamship  as  a  whole  pre- 


THE    FIRST    GREAT    ADVENTURE     119 

sents.  Stevenson,  looking  from  the  second  cabin, 
saw  centrally  what  most  of  us  see  superficially.  The 
lessons  of  the  occasion  were  for  him  great  and 
enduring  lessons,  while  for  us  they  are  an  amuse- 
ment. 

It  furnished  a  complete  little  criticism  of  the 
world,  that  central  second  cabin,  with  the  saloon 
passengers  above  and  the  steerage  below.  The 
higher  man  is  autonymous ;  the  lower  so  intimately 
bound  up  with  his  neighbors  that  he  is  at  their 
mercy;  neither  is  free.  For  Stevenson  there  was  a 
lesson  here  that  made  him  desire  a  new  kind  of  citi- 
zenship in  the  world,  a  new  freedom.  In  many  ways 
this  voyage  was  a  philosophic  preparation  for  the 
experiences  he  was  now  to  undergo. 

Landing  in  New  York  on  a  rainy  Sunday,  the 
eighteenth  of  August,  and  still  clinging  to  the  idea  of 
seeing  America  from  the  emigrant's  point  of  view, 
he  spent  the  night  in  a  lodging  house  by  the  docks, 
where  he  got  not  a  minute's  sleep ;  then  all  the  next 
day  he  was  pattering  about  in  the  rain  on  errands, 
and  was  so  wet  that  when  he  finally  went  for  his 
train  in  the  evening  he  had  to  leave  some  of  his 
clothes  behind  at  the  lodging  house.  Cabs  and  up- 
town hotels  are  not  in  vogue  for  emigrants,  and  the 
only  inconsistency  of  his  absurd  conduct,  as  far  as 
one  can  see,  was  to  eat  a  large  meal  on  Sunday  night, 
with  French  coffee  at  the  end,  at  a  good  restaurant. 
But  this  he  partly  justifies  by  saying,  "I  never  en- 
tered into  the  feeling  of  Jack  on  land  so  completely 
as  when  I  tasted  that  coffee." 


120  STEVENSON 

II 

With  the  six  big  volumes  of  Bancroft's  History 
of  the  United  States  in  his  traveling  rug,  he  began 
his  journey  westward.  Across  the  Plains  is  not  a 
description  of  our  country.  It  is  a  record  of  endur- 
ance and  kindness,  and  an  indirect  description  of  the 
author  in  what  was  one  of  the  most  trying  hard- 
ships of  his  life.  The  reason  why  it  is  so  interesting 
is  because  of  the  common  situations  it  describes. 
We  have  all  stood  in  a  jam  at  the  ferry — and  this 
scene  with  which  the  book  opens  is  one  of  the  most 
masterly  things  in  all  Stevenson's  works;  we  have 
all  suffered  from  the  excessive  heat  and  dust  of 
travel;  we  have  gone  hours,  and  seemingly  days, 
without  a  meal,  owing  to  a  wreck  or  a  flood  some- 
where ahead  on  the  line ;  we  have  been  snubbed  and 
roused  to  indignation  by  the  conductor,  or  even  per- 
haps by  the  newsboy;  we  have  had  our  "words"  at 
the  desks  of  hotels;  we  have  frothed  over  insults 
and  unkindness;  we  have  also  had  our  amusements 
by  the  way,  little  pleasures  over  new  names — and 
Stevenson,  ever  alive  to  the  sound  of  things,  was 
entranced  with  Susquehanna,  Bellefontaine,  and 
Sandusky,  for  America  has  surely  outdone  the 
world  in  this  matter;  we  have  wondered  whether 
the  Middle  West  were  monotonous  or  beautiful,  or, 
possibly,  both — "a  sort  of  flat  paradise,  not  unfre- 
quented by  the  devil,"  Stevenson  decided;  we  have 
amused  ourselves  by  declining  to  give  our  family 
history  to  the  man  sitting  next  to  us ;  and  we  have 


THE   FIRST.   GREAT   ADVENTURE    121 

observed  the  marvelously  patronizing,  yet  thor- 
oughly agreeable,  familiarity  of  the  negro  waiter 
at  a  railway  restaurant.  But,  initiated  by  these 
vivid  commonplaces  into  the  atmosphere  of  a  rail- 
way journey,  the  reader  comes  on  much  that  is  not 
so  familiar:  the  herded  life  of  the  emigrants,  the 
smells  and  foulness  of  the  cars  thirty  years  ago,  the 
meanness  or  irresponsible  loutishness  of  roughs,  the 
sleeping  boards  and  blankets,  the  orgy  of  the  morn- 
ing toilet  under  vile  conditions,  sickness,  misery, 
ribaldry  and  laughter,  endlessly  intermingled  in  a 
few  hundred  cubic  feet  of  fetid  air,  hour  after  hour, 
mile  after  mile. 

Attached  to  the  train  of  emigrants  at  Ogden  was  a 
carload  of  Chinese,  by  far  the  best  behaved  and 
cleanly  of  them  all.  But  the  Americans  did  not  think 
so ;  they  had  for  them  only  maledictions ;  they  seemed 
to  hate  them  a  priori,  and  never  seemed  to  have  really 
looked  at  them  or  thought  about  them.  "They  de- 
clared them  hideous  vermin,  and  affected  a  kind  of 
choking  in  the  throat  when  they  beheld  them.  Now, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  young  Chinese  man  is  so 
like  a  large  class  of  European  women,  that  on  rais- 
ing my  head  and  suddenly  catching  sight  of  one 
at  a  considerable  distance,  I  have  for  an  instant 
been  deceived  by  the  resemblance.  I  do  not  say  it 
is  the  most  attractive  class  of  our  women,  but  for 
all  that  many  a  man's  wife  is  less  pleasantly  fa- 
voured. Again,  my  emigrants  declared  that  the 
Chinese  were  dirty.  I  cannot  say  they  were  clean, 
for  that  was  impossible  upon  the  journey;  but  in 


122  STEVENSON 

their  efforts  after  cleanliness  they  put  the  rest  of 
us  to  shame.  We  all  pigged  and  stewed  in  one 
infamy,  wet  our  hands  and  faces  for  half  a  minute 
daily  on  the  platform,  and  were  unashamed.  But 
the  Chinese  never  lost  an  opportunity,  and  you  could 
see  them  washing  their  feet — an  act  not  dreamed  of 
among  ourselves — and  going  as  far  as  decency  per- 
mitted to  wash  their  whole  bodies.  I  may  remark 
by  the  way  that  the  dirtier  people  are  in  their  per- 
sons the  more  delicate  is  their  sense  of  modesty. 
A  clean  man  strips  in  a  crowded  boathouse ;  but  he 
who  is  unwashed  slinks  in  and  out  of  bed  without 
uncovering  an  inch  of  skin.  Lastly,  these  very  foul 
and  malodorous  Caucasians  entertained  the  sur- 
prising illusion  that  it  was  the  Chinese  wagon  and 
that  alone  which  stank.  I  have  said  already  that  it 
was  the  exception  and  notably  the  freshest  of  the 
three. 

"These  judgments  are  typical  of  the  feeling  in  all 
Western  America.  The  Chinese  are  considered  stu- 
pid, because  they  are  imperfectly  acquainted  with 
English.  They  are  held  to  be  base,  because  their 
dexterity  and  frugality  enable  them  to  underbid  the 
lazy,  luxurious  Caucasian.  They  are  said  to  be 
thieves;  I  am  sure  they  have  no  monopoly  of  that. 
They  are  called  cruel;  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the 
cheerful  Irishman  may  each  reflect  before  he  bears 
the  accusation.  ...  I  am  told,  again,  that  they 
are  of  the  race  of  river  pirates,  and  belong  to  the 
most  despised  and  dangerous  class  in  the  Celestial 
Empire.    But  if  this  be  so,  what  remarkable  pirates 


THE    FIRST    GREAT    ADVENTURE     123 

have  we  here!  and  what  must  be  the  virtues,  the 
industry,  the  education,  and  the  intelligence  of  their 
superiors  at  home ! 

"A  while  ago  it  was  the  Irish,  now  it  is  the  Chi- 
nese that  must  go.  Such  is  the  cry.  It  seems,  after 
all,  that  no  country  is  bound  to  submit  to  immigra- 
tion any  more  than  to  invasion;  each  is  war  to  the 
knife,  and  resistance  to  either  but  legitimate  defense. 
Yet  we  may  regret  the  free  tradition  of  the  republic, 
which  loved  to  depict  herself  with  open  arms,  wel- 
coming all  unfortunates.  And  certainly,  as  a  man 
who  believed  that  he  loves  freedom,  I  may  be  ex- 
cused some  bitterness  when  I  find  her  sacred  name 
misused  in  the  contention.  It  was  but  the  other 
day  that  I  heard  a  vulgar  fellow  in  the  Sand-lot,  the 
popular  tribune  of  San  Francisco,  roaring  for  arms 
and  butchery.  'At  the  call  of  Abraham  Lincoln/ 
said  the  orator,  'ye  rose  in  the  name  of  freedom  to 
set  free  the  negroes;  can  ye  not  rise  and  liberate 
yourselves  from  a  few  dirty  Mongolians?'  It  ex- 
ceeds the  license  of  an  Irishman  to  rebaptize  our 
selfish  interests  by  the  name  of  virtue.     .     .     . 

"For  my  own  part,  I  could  not  look  but  with  won- 
der and  respect  on  the  Chinese.  Their  forefathers 
watched  the  stars  before  mine  had  begun  to  keep 
pigs.  Gunpowder  and  printing,  which  the  other  day 
we  imitated,  and  a  school  of  manners  which  we 
never  had  the  delicacy  so  much  as  to  desire  to  imi- 
tate, were  theirs  in  a  long-past  antiquity.  They 
walk  the  earth  with  us,  but  it  seems  they  must  be 
of  different  clay.    They  hear  the  clock  strike  the 


124  STEVENSON 

same  hour,  yet  surely  of  a  different  epoch.  They 
travel  by  steam  conveyance,  yet  with  such  a  bag- 
gage of  old  Asiatic  thoughts  and  superstitions  as 
might  check  the  locomotive  in  its  course.  Whatever 
is  thought  within  the  circuit  of  the  Great  Wall; 
what  the  wry-eyed,  spectacled  schoolmaster  teaches 
in  the  hamlets  round  Pekin;  religions  so  old  that 
our  language  looks  a  hal fling  boy  alongside ;  philoso- 
phy so  wise  that  our  best  philosophers  find  things 
therein  to  wonder  at;  all  this  traveled  alongside  of 
me  for  thousands  of  miles  over  plain  and  mountain. 
Heaven  knows  if  we  had  one  common  thought  or 
fancy  all  that  way,  or  whether  our  eyes,  which  yet 
were  formed  upon  the  same  design,  beheld  the  same 
world  out  of  the  railway  windows.  And  when 
either  of  us  turned  his  thoughts  to  home  and  child- 
hood, what  a  strange  dissimilarity  must  there  not 
have  been  in  these  pictures  of  the  mind — when  I 
beheld  that  old,  gray,  castled  city,  high-throned 
above  the  firth,  with  the  flag  of  Britain  flying  and 
the  redcoat  sentry  pacing  over  all;  and  the  man  in 
the  next  car  to  me  would  conjure  up  some  junks 
and  a  pagoda  and  a  fort  of  porcelain,  and  call  it, 
with  the  same  affection,  home." — Across  the  Plains. 

This  car  of  Chinese  gave  Stevenson  the  text  for 
a  sermon  that  is  really  the  moral  of  his  whole  jour- 
ney. And  in  the  spirit  here  expressed,  including 
both  love  and  knowledge  of  humanity,  is  the  key 
to  much  in  Stevenson's  own  character  and  in  his 
experience  later  on.   The  red-hot  socialist  of  Edin- 


THE   FIRST   GREAT   ADVENTURE     125 

burgh  University,  the  defender  of  despised  races,  the 
blood-brother  and  counselor  of  Island  Kings,  is  noth- 
ing more  frequently  and  genuinely  than  the  Scotch 
lad  who  keeps  a  cheerful  face  in  spite  of  sickness 
and  continues  a  dozen  little  services  among  his 
neighbors  everywhere  on  life's  road.  Of  him  you 
may  read  between  the  lines  in  all  his  books. 


Ill 


Looking,  as  he  was  told,  like  a  man  at  death's 
door,  owing  to  a  serious  illness  during  the  last  few 
days  of  the  journey,  he  arrived  in  San  Francisco  on 
August  thirtieth.  He  found  that  Mrs.  Osbourne  was 
getting  well ;  and  then  to  save  himself  from  a  com- 
plete breakdown  he  went  at  once  to  camp  out  in  the 
high  soft  air  of  the  mountains  above  Monterey.  To 
the  work  of  making  his  own  camp  he  was  quite  un- 
equal. But  two  old  frontiersmen  on  a  goat  ranch 
took  him  in  and  nursed  him  back  to  a  semblance  of 
health. 

Though  Stevenson  had  now  a  keen  sense  of  how 
it  really  was  with  him,  he  again  continued  his  lit- 
erary work  when  he  should  have  devoted  himself 
to  the  serious  business  of  resting.  Speaking  of 
these  days  in  a  letter  to  Edmund  Gosse,  he  says  "it 
was  an  odd,  miserable  piece  of  my  life;  and  accord- 
ing to  all  rule,  it  should  have  been  my  death;  but 
after  a  while  my  spirit  got  up  again  in  a  divine 
frenzy  and  has  since  kicked  and  spurred  my  vile  body 
forward  with  great  emphasis  and  success."    This 


126  STEVENSON 

whole  American  journey  is  a  tale  of  conduct  at  once 
heroic  and  blindly  foolish.  On  the  Devonia,  suffer- 
ing from  bad  food  and  bad  air  and  the  general  dis- 
comfort of  the  quarters  he  had  chosen,  he  had  writ- 
ten, in  his  "slantindicular  cabin,"  "The  Story  of  a 
Lie,"  which  he  sent  to  the  New  Quarterly,  soon  after 
his  arrival  in  California.  Besides  this,  he  arranged 
his  notes  for  The  Amateur  Emigrant,  which  he  had 
half  drafted  by  October,  when  he  moved  down  from 
the  ranch  to  Monterey.  On  the  emigrant  train  he 
had  of  course  eaten  irregularly,  slept  on  a  board 
laid  across  the  seats,  breathed  constantly  the  gases 
and  bad  air  of  the  car,  or,  while  they  crawled  over 
the  prairies,  he  had  perched  on  top  of  the  cars — a 
position  he  found  rather  bad  for  writing;  and  not 
free  from  dirt.  The  heat  was  most  of  the  time 
extreme.  He  says  that  he  often  wore  nothing  but 
a  shirt  and  a  pair  of  trousers,  and  never  buttoned 
his  shirt.  Added  to  this  kind  of  strain  and  ex- 
posure was  the  uncertainty  of  the  quest  on  which 
he  had  come,  and  the  feeling  that  he  had  alienated 
the  affections  of  his  parents.  Throughout  the  win- 
ter in  California  he  was  quite  unfit  for  work.  Life 
in  the  open  air  and  good  food  alone  could  have  saved 
him  from  that  "galloping  consumption"  on  the  verge 
of  which  he  tells  Gosse  he  had  been  during  the 
winter. 

In  this  situation,  bordering  more  and  more  on 
the  tragic,  Stevenson  yet  felt  that  he  must  earn 
what  he  could  by  his  pen  and  meanwhile  practise 
the  strictest  economy.    Till  December  he  lived  at 


THE    FIRST    GREAT    ADVENTURE     127 

Monterey  in  the  house  of  a  French  doctor,  and  seems 
to  have  had  one  square  meal  a  day  at  Jules  Simon- 
eau's  restaurant,  which  he  later  came  to  regard,  in 
his  cheerful  and  romantic  fashion,  as  the  eating- 
place  par  excellence  of  the  world.  He  worked 
steadily.  In  a  letter  to  Colvin  from  San  Francisco, 
January  10,  1880,  he  reports  that  he  managed  to 
write  a  good  deal  down  at  Monterey  "when  I  was 
pretty  sickly  most  of  the  time." 

If  you  realize  what  the  problematic  nature  of 
Stevenson's  existence  was  in  those  months,  and  then 
turn  to  his  poetical  description  of  Monterey  in  "The 
Old  Pacific  Capital,"  and  see  what  he  wishes  to  re- 
cord of  that  existence  you  will  gain  considerable 
insight  into  the  cheerfulness  of  his  character.  The 
first  paragraph,  a  description  of  the  bay  of  Monte- 
rey, is  quoted  in  all  books  of  rhetoric  for  the  en- 
lightenment of  college  freshmen  as  a  model  of 
orderliness.  But  what  follows  is  a  poem,  a  lyrical 
echo  of  the  sea  beaches  and  the  forest;  and  remem- 
bering Stevenson  at  Monterey  you  will  feel  both 
how  intensely  fond  of  life  he  was,  and  how  superior 
to  the  conditions  of  life. 

Besides  the  work  already  mentioned,  he  sent  in 
October  to  Henley,  for  Stephen  to  print,  "The  Pa- 
vilion on  the  Links,"  a  "grand  carpentry  story  in 
nine  chapters."  He  had  also  written  in  October 
eighty-three  pages  of  a  story  called  "A  Vendetta  in 
the  West,"  which,  with  a  number  of  others  planned 
at  this  time,  never  matured.  •  He  was  desperately 
worried  about  the  financial  aspect  of  his  ventures 


128  STEVENSON 

and  fills  his  letters  to  Colvin  with  calculations.  In 
January,  1880,  he  was  working  up  his  essays  on 
Thoreau  and  Yoshida-Torajiro,  and  remaking  an 
old  play,  Semiramis,  into  a  novel,  "The  Forest 
State,"  ultimately  to  become  Prince  Otto. 

All  this  time  the  possibility  of  death  ran  in  his 
thoughts.  In  February  it  is  probable  that  he  wrote 
the  "Requiem,"  destined  to  be  the  best  known  of 
his  poems.  To  a  letter  to  Colvin  he  appended  a 
"Sketch  of  My  Tomb,"  which  contains  two  lines 
from  the  poem  and  the  words,  nit  or  aquis. 

In  March  he  was  overcome  with  grief  at  the  death 
of  his  landlord's  little  four-year-old  child,  whom  he 
had  helped  tend  during  several  nights.  And  soon  he 
was  himself  almost  at  death's  door,  finally  worn  out 
with  the  intense  strain  of  his  complex  situation.  "I 
have  been  very  sick,"  he  wrote  to  Gosse,  in  the 
middle  of  April;  "on  the  verge  of  a  galloping  con- 
sumption, cold  sweats,  prostrating  attacks  of  cough, 
sinking  fits  in  which  I  lost  the  power  of  speech, 
fever,  and  the  ugliest  circumstances  of  the  disease ; 
and  I  have  cause  to  bless  God,  my  wife  that  is  to 
be,  and  one  Doctor  Bamford  (a  name  the  Muse 
repels),  that  I  have  come  out  of  all  this  and  got  my 
feet  once  more  upon  a  little  hilltop,  with  a  fair 
prospect  of  life  and  some  new  desire  of  living." 


IV 


Mrs.  Osbourne,  who  was  now  fortunately  free 
to  see  Stevenson,  nursed  him  back  to  temporary 


THE   FIRST   GREAT   ADVENTURE     129 

health.  She  had  obtained  her  divorce,  and  though 
it  was  her  wish  to  put  off  the  marriage  for  a 
considerable  time,  the  necessity  of  caring  for  Ste- 
venson prevailed  upon  her.  On  May  19,  1880, 
the  ceremony  took  place  in  the  house  of  some 
friends  in  San  Francisco.  Stevenson  never  saw 
his  wife's  first  husband,  who  shortly  remarried,  and 
who  is  supposed,  after  leaving  his  second  wife,  to 
have  gone  to  South  Africa.  Stevenson's  union  with 
Fanny  Van  de  Grift  was,  as  he  said,  a  marriage 
in  extremis.  But  it  proved  his  salvation  in  more 
ways  than  one.  It  was  the  immediate  means  of 
reuniting  him  to  his  family.  For  his  wife  soon 
won  the  hearts  of  his  father  and  mother,  and  in 
the  eight  remaining  years  of  Thomas  Stevenson's 
life  she  was  his  great  comfort.  Thomas  Stevenson 
had,  some  time  before  the  marriage,  seen  his  mis- 
take in  regard  to  his  son's  behavior  and  had  cabled 
Louis  to  count  on  an  allowance  of  two  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds.  Later  he  made  his  daughter-in-law 
promise  to  apply  for  further  funds  whenever  she 
thought  they  were  needed,  any  protests  of  her  hus- 
band to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 

Fanny  Van  de  Grift  was  without  question  the  wife 
for  Stevenson.  Of  an  equally  vigorous  and  roman- 
tic nature,  she  was  not  given  to  fretting  over  the 
lack  of  conventional  comfort  in  the  changeful  life 
they  embarked  on.  She  led  a  positive  and  enthusi- 
astic existence  beside  him.  She  was  his  best  en- 
courager  and  his  frankest  critic;  and  if,  like  his 
other  counselors,   she  was  unable  to  give  him  a 


130  STEVENSON 

strong  sense  of  intellectual  purpose  and  sequence 
during  these  crucial  years,  she  never  allowed  the 
responsibilities  of  marriage  to  cramp  his  free  and 
fluent  moments.  She  saw  clearly  that  he  could  not 
manage  successfully  work  demanding  great  powers 
of  endurance,  and  also  that  steady,  patient  work 
was  apt  neither  to  bring  him  inspiration  nor  to  rep- 
resent the  quality  in  his  temperament  which  counted 
most.  Her  continual  response  to  the  sporadic  begin- 
ning of  things  that  were  never  completed  matched 
his  own  hopefulness,  and  did  much  to  bring  forth 
the  ultimately  successful  experiment.  Never  does  she 
appear  to  have  damped  his  ardor  for  these  ever-re- 
curring fresh  starts ;  and  yet  she  possessed  much  of 
that  critical  sense  of  which  Stevenson  had  so  little — 
the  instinct  or  energy  which  knows  infallibly  a  great 
plan  from  a  small  one,  which  discards  the  impos- 
sible, which  burns  rubbish  and  does  not  merely 
sweep  it  into  a  corner.  In  the  charming  prefaces 
she  has  written  for  her  husband's  books  she  has  un- 
consciously drawn  her  own  portrait ;  and  the  reader 
who  knows  only  her  husband's  beautiful  verses  to 
her  and  the  facts  of  her  life  as  his  devoted  helper, 
should  see  her  more  intimately.  She  is  not  alone 
the  woman  who  nurses  Stevenson  through  a  dozen 
nearly  fatal  illnesses,  who  engages  and  prepares  the 
cottage  at  Saranac  Lake,  who  goes  on  ahead  to  San 
Francisco  and  charters  the  yacht  for  their  South 
Sea  voyage.  Possessed  of  a  simple  and  telling  san- 
ity, combined  with  a  complete  sympathy  for  her 
husband's  whimsical  and  romantic  humors,  she  is 


THE   FIRST    GREAT   ADVENTURE     131 

also  that  rare  kind  of  woman  who  is  always  friendly 
and  always  independent. 

Immediately  after  the  marriage,  Stevenson,  his 
wife,  and  his  fourteen-year-old  stepson,  Lloyd  Os- 
bourne,  went  up  into  the  mountains  above  Calistoga, 
some  fifty  miles  north  of  San  Francisco.  The  Sil- 
verado Squatters  is  the  story  of  this  honeymoon. 
It  tells  how  they  found  a  deserted  mining  camp  on 
a  ridge  of  St.  Helena  Mountain,  how  they  cleaned 
the  refuse  out  of  one  of  the  cabins  and,  after  a 
fashion,  made  themselves  at  home  there. 

Stevenson  seems  to  have  been  constitutionally  un- 
able to  choose  comfortable  conditions  for  himself. 
Through  life  he  more  or  less  camped  and  roughed 
it.  And  a  remarkable  and  typical  thing  about  him 
is  that  he  always  remained  utterly  unable  to  cope 
with  the  practical  difficulties  of  the  kind  of  life  he 
chose.  He  was  what  his  wife  calls  "a  handless 
man."  He  was  hardly  to  be  trusted  with  an  ax, 
and  he  never  learned  to  tie  a  knot  that  would  hold. 
In  his  long  experience  ashore  and  afloat,  in  the 
midst  of  just  such  conditions  as  would  seem  inevi- 
tably to  develop  some  ingenuity  and  handiness,  he 
was  consistently  a  lubber.  Evidences  of  this  abound 
in  his  own  narratives  of  travel,  a  classic  instance  be- 
ing the  affair  with  Modeste's  pack  at  the  very  start 
of  his  journey  with  her. 

V 

On  this  aspect  of  his  character  the  most  interest- 
ing comment  is  the  essay  on  Thoreau,  which  he  had 


132  STEVENSON 

just  written  in  San  Francisco  before  his  marriage. 
Stevenson  recognized  in  Thoreau  a  man  in  many 
ways  his  exact  opposite.  In  all  the  little  feats  of  skill 
in  daily  life  Thoreau  was  letter-perfect.  He  lived 
by  plan.  He  safeguarded  himself  by  a  series  of 
negative  precautions — "negative  superiorities,"  Ste- 
venson calls  them.  His  pride  was  in  perfecting  small 
arrangements  and  in  never  disturbing  them  for 
greater  opportunities.  "He  had  no  waste  lands, 
nor  kitchen-midden  in  his  nature,  but  was  all  im- 
proved and  sharpened  to  a  point."  "He  was  almost 
shockingly  devoid  of  weaknesses;  he  had  not  enough 
of  them  to  be  truly  polar  with  humanity."  For  Ste- 
venson, meagerness  and  abstinence  were  not  human 
virtues.  Thoreau,  living  in  his  cabin  by  Walden 
Pond,  despising  comfort,  defiant  of  custom,  caring 
most  for  high  thoughts  and  less  for  material  success, 
was,  like  Stevenson,  anticonventional.  But  Tho- 
reau was  also  antisocial ;  he  was  not  congenial  in  his 
eccentricities ;  he  was  aloof  and  freakish.  He  feared 
"the  bracing  contact  with  the  world."  Stevenson 
is  the  congenial  Bohemian.  He  seems  never  to  have 
learned  to  do  anything  but  conversation  and  "style," 
the  latter  of  which  he  has  by  now  described  as  "the 
essence  of  thinking";  but  his  daily  life,  if  a  trifle 
slouchy,  was  open  and  radiant.  He  had  never  de- 
cided "to  lead  a  life  of  self-improvement,"  and  his 
egotism  was  not,  like  Thoreau's,  self-centered.  Ste- 
venson's egotism  makes  always  a  charming  paradox. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  essay  shows  Stevenson's 
admiration  for  the  challenge  that  Thoreau  threw 


THE   FIRST    GREAT    ADVENTURE     133 

down  to  society,  the  romanticist's  challenge  of  the 
doctrine  of  Success.  What  Stevenson  expresses  by 
his  whole  warm,  varied  life  and  labor,  Thoreau  puts 
into  a  specially  maintained  attitude,  and  into  the 
aphorisms  of  his  marvelously  incisive  intellect.  "The 
cost  of  a  thing  is  the  amount  of  what  I  will  call 
life  which  is  required  to  be  exchanged  for  it,  imme- 
diately or  in  the  long  run."  Stevenson  says  that  he 
has  been  accustomed  to  put  this  to  himself  a  little 
more  clearly,  "that  the  price  we  have  to  pay  for 
money  is  paid  in  liberty."  And  he  adds  that  whether 
we  can  afford  a  thousand  a  year,  a  two  thousand, 
or  a  ten  thousand  a  year  livelihood,  is  entirely  a 
matter  of  taste;  "it  is  not  in  the  least  degree  a 
question  of  duty,  though  commonly  supposed  so." 
The  two  men  are  together  here,  and  when  Thoreau 
says,  "I  am  convinced  that  to  maintain  oneself  on 
this  earth  is  not  a  hardship,  but  a  pastime,  if  we 
will  live  simply  and  wisely ;  as  the  pursuits  of  sim- 
pier  nations  are  still  the  sports  of  the  more  artifi- 
cial"— does  not  this  exactly  express  what  Steven- 
son was  learning  at  Silverado  and  what  he  was  to 
learn  more  thoroughly  as  a  pioneer  in  the  South 
Seas? 

Much  of  the  charm  of  all  the  essays  in  Familiar 
Studies  of  Men  and  Books,  many  of  which  he  had 
written  by  this  time,  lies  in  their  representation  of 
his  own  personality.  He  is  never  dully  objective. 
Through  his  warm  sympathies  or  his  sincere  antago- 
nisms the  characters  he  treats  of  are  revealed  just 
as  men  are  revealed  to  us  in  real  life.    He  seems  al- 


134  STEVENSON 

ways  to  belong  to  the  company  of  men  about  whom 
he  writes.  You  can  easily  imagine  him  visiting 
Thoreau  by  Walden  Pond.  They  would  have  un- 
derstood each  other  perfectly — and  disagreed.  He 
was  enough  of  a  tramp  to  know  Villon's  soul,  its 
gleeful  unrespectability  and  its  impudent  satisfac- 
tions, and  enough  of  an  aristocrat  to  understand  its 
saving  grace  of  scorn.  You  will  perhaps  learn  more 
of  Burns  in  his  essay  on  the  famous  love  affairs 
than  anywhere  else.  It  is  at  the  beginning  of  the 
essay  on  Burns  that  he  states  his  theory  of  human 
understanding.  "To  write  with  authority  about 
another  man  we  must  have  fellow-feeling  and  some 
common  ground  of  experience  with  our  subject. 
We  may  praise  or  blame  according  as  we  find  him 
related  to  us  by  the  best  or  worst  in  ourselves;  but 
it  is  only  in  virtue  of  some  relationship  that  we  can 
be  his  judges,  even  to  condemn.  Feelings  which  we 
share  and  understand  enter  for  us  into  the  tissue  of 
the  man's  character;  those  to  which  we  are  stran- 
gers in  our  own  experience  we  are  inclined  to  regard 
as  blots,  exceptions,  inconsistencies  and  excursions 
of  the  diabolic;  we  conceive  them  with  repugnance, 
explain  them  with  difficulty,  and  raise  our  hands  to 
heaven  in  wonder  when  we  find  them  in  conjunction 
with  talents  that  we  respect  or  virtues  that  we  ad- 
mire."— "Some  Aspects  of  Robert  Burns,"  Familiar 
Studies  of  Men  and  Books. 

This  is  the  reason  why  such  different  men  as 
Pepys  and  Walt  Whitman  and  Charles  of  Orleans 


THE    FIRST    GREAT    ADVENTURE     135 

are  open  books  to  him.  He  knew  their  characters 
through  his  own,  as  it  is  given  few  critics  of  the 
intellect  to  know;  and  this  gift  of  sympathy  would 
have  made  him  one  of  the  great  biographers  had  he 
so  chosen  and  persisted.  For  my  own  part  I  regret 
that  he  did  not  so  choose.  I  would  gladly  forego  a 
few  of  his  Wreckers  and  Prince  Ottos  for  that  pro- 
jected life  of  Hazlitt  (it  was  even  contracted  for1) 
which  he  never  wrote.  For  he  understood  the  art  of 
describing  greatness,  personally  and  intimately,  not 
by  any  literary  dexterity,  but  by  letting  it  enter  into 
the  tissue  of  his  own  character.  He  understood  how 
the  acts  of  greatness,  the  world  over,  are  interre- 
lated, though  seas  appear  to  flow  between  them. 
For  like  all  men  of  wide  sympathy,  he  lived  in  the 
midst  of  their  influence  and  focused  some  part  of  it 
in  his  own  valiant  mind.  Speaking  of  Yoshida- 
Torajiro  and  other  Japanese  reformers,  he  says : 
"It  is  exhilarating  to  have  lived  in  the  same  days 
with  these  great-hearted  gentlemen.  Only  a  few 
miles  from  us,  to  speak  by  the  proportion  of  the 
universe,  while  I  was  droning  over  my  lessons,  Yo- 
shida  was  goading  himself  to  be  wakeful  with  the 
stings  of  the  mosquito;  and  while  you  were  grudg- 
ing a  penny  income  tax,  Kusakabe  was  stepping  to 
death  with  a  noble  sentence  on  his  lips."  There  is  no 
more  genuine  fiber  in  Stevenson  than  this  sense  of 
the  romance  which  the  great  deeds  of  others  give  to 
our  smaller  lives. 

Do  you  wonder  that  Fanny  Van  de  Grift  wished 


1  Letters,  II,  p.  76. 


136  STEVENSON 

to  cast  her  lot  with  his  and  to  rescue  him  from 
death's  door?  Sick  as  he  was,  his  high  spirit,  which 
you  may  see  in  this  essay  on  Yoshida-Torajiro, 
written  in  the  midst  of  his  illness,  belied  the  sorry 
facts  and  refused  to  let  them  dominate. 


VI 


From  May  until  the  end  of  July,  1880,  except  for 
a  few  weeks  when  the  party  were  forced  to  return 
to  Calistoga,  owing  to  a  light  attack  of  diphtheria 
with  which  Mrs.  Stevenson  and  Lloyd  came  down, 
they  occupied  the  Silverado  mine.  Stevenson's  in- 
terests while  there  were  very  quiet.  He  was  much 
too  ill  to  take  an  active  part  in  life,  but  his  impres- 
sions served  amply  for  a  pleasant  book.  The  owner 
of  the  Silverado  Hotel,  Rufe  Hanson,  whose  por- 
trait is  really  a  very  considerable  performance,  Kel- 
mar,  the  Jew  trader,  and  the  few  people  who  pene- 
trated into  this  mountain  recess,  form  the  mainstay 
of  the  narrative.  The  description  of  the  arrival  and 
departure  of  the  daily  stage-coach,  the  history  of 
the  mine,  a  typical  Stevensonian  disquisition  on  the 
sea  fogs  that  rolled  up  the  mountainside,  and  such 
incidental  matters,  make  the  setting.  Stevenson 
does  not  become  a  woodland  philosopher.  Even  the 
esthetics  which  had  served  him  for  a  motive  in 
"Forest  Notes"  and  "Fontainebleau"  is  absent  from 
Silverado  Squatters.  But  on  closing  the  little  book 
you  have  looked  at  a  strange  new  corner  of  nature 
and  known  its  vivid  charm. 


THE   FIRST   GREAT   ADVENTURE     137 

The  first  of  August  saw  the  party  on  their  way  to 
New  York.  When  they  arrived  in  Glasgow,  August 
seventeenth,  Stevenson's  parents  and  Sidney  Colvin 
were  on  the  dock  to  meet  them. 

The  first  part  of  the  Great  Adventure  was  over. 
It  had  meant  for  Stevenson  many  vital  experiences 
and  the  development  of  a  wisdom  that  sets  the  tone 
of  his  most  serious  later  work.  It  had  marked  the 
culmination  of  his  long  misunderstanding  with  his 
father.  It  had  settled  him  in  his  craft  of  literature. 
It  had  led  him  to  look  at  the  world  from  an  unusual 
and  invaluable  point  of  view.  It  had  given  him  his 
life's  chief  happiness.  And  in  all  this  there  had 
been  for  him  both  a  victory  and  a  defeat.  For  he 
could  not  have  put  the  thing  through  single-handed. 
Without  the  care  of  the  wife  he  set  out  to  win,  and 
without  the  final  generosity  of  his  father  the  adven- 
ture might  well  have  been  all  misadventure.  But  if 
it  involved  the  serious  damaging  of  Stevenson's 
health,  it  had  also  brought  him  a  means  for  safe- 
guarding the  slim  remainder;  and  Stevenson,  keep- 
ing his  mind  not  on  the  defeat,  but  on  what  was  left 
to  him,  turned  that  little  year  by  year  into  victory. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ILL    HEALTH    AND   AMBITION 

I 

THE  reunion  with  his  family  was  a  deep  satis- 
faction, the  more  so  since  it  was  directly  a 
part  of  the  blessing  of  his  marriage.  It  strength- 
ened his  nerves  for  the  definite  struggle  with  sick- 
ness which  now  lasted  almost  without  intermission 
until  he  returned  to  America  in  1888.  In  Edin- 
burgh he  was  told  by  Doctor  Balfour  that  the 
seriously  diseased  condition  of  his  throat  and  lungs 
would  make  it  necessary  for  him  to  seek  the  high 
air  of  Switzerland  at  once.  So,  with  his  wife  and 
Lloyd  he  arrived  at  Davos  Platz  early  in  November, 
1880. 

In  many  important  respects  this  first  winter  at 
Davos  marks  the  beginning  of  a  new  phase  in 
Stevenson's  life  and  literary  development.  For 
seven  years  he  had  been  a  restless  vagabond.  He 
had  been  full  of  changing  experiences,  and  had 
written  on  this  or  that  topic,  as  it  had  presented 
itself.  He  had  not  exercised  himself  in  steady  labor 
on  some  one  thing  that  required  a  continually  re- 
newed comprehension  of  the  whole,  especially  of 

138 


ILL   HEALTH    AND    AMBITION     139 

the  relation  of  each  gradual  phase  to  a  well-under- 
stood end.  All  his  productions  had  been  short  and, 
so  to  speak,  casual.  His  unity  of  purpose  was,  like 
a  poet's,  the  expression  of  his  own  temperament 
apropos  of  a  great  variety  of  interests.  He  had 
undertaken  no  work  longer  than  An  Inland  Voyage, 
a  book  of  some  two  hundred  pages.  Now,  for  the 
next  eight  years,  he  was  enforced,  so  far  as  he 
could  be,  to  settle  down  at  various  health  resorts, 
Davos,  Hyeres,  Bournemouth,  Saranac,  to  an  out- 
wardly regular  life,  and  though  he  was  inwardly 
ever  the  same  R.  L.  S.  of  roving  disposition,  a 
natural  change  occurred  in  his  temperament  as  a 
writer.  He  became  less  interested  in  recording  his 
own  immediate  pursuits,  and,  after  a  few  papers 
on  life  at  Davos,  he  was  apt  to  seek  tasks  requiring 
longer  attention  and  more  objective  enthusiasms. 

And  herein  lies  what  seems  to  me  the  tragedy  of 
Stevenson's  literary  career — for  even  the  most  suc- 
cessful author  may  have  his  tragedy.  It  is  a  matter 
to  be  taken  up  in  more  detail  later ;  but  it  may  now 
be  briefly  pointed  out  that  at  just  the  time  when 
Stevenson's  maturing  purposes  naturally  tempted 
him  on  to  try  his  hand  at  long  books,  he  began  to 
lack  essential  qualities  for  their  construction — en- 
durance and  evenness  of  mood.  By  a  struggle  he 
again  and  again  reached  the  end  of  a  three  or  four 
hundred  page  story;  but  the  struggle  shows;  and 
the  end  is  often  not  the  end,  but  only  an  end.  This 
I  take  to  be  obvious  on  a  second  reading  of  Prince 
Otto,   Catriona,   The  Master,   The   Wrecker,  and 


140  STEVENSON 

St.  Ives.  It  may  be  said  with  a  fair  approach  to  the 
truth  that  the  best  of  Stevenson  is  always  short, 
and  the  weakest  long ;  and  it  makes  a  most  convinc- 
ing evidence,  in  the  conflict  between  his  health  and 
his  genius,  of  the  handicap  under  which  he  worked. 
He  wished  to  be  a  writer  of  romances;  and  it  is  to 
be  laid  very  largely  to  his  health  that  his  genius, 
as  that  is  now  seen,  was  in  the  essays,  the  tales,  and 
moral  fables,  and  not  in  the  romances.  A  tale  like 
The  Merry  Men  or  certain  pages  of  Kidnapped,  or 
the  start  of  Treasure  Island,  makes  one  feel  that 
he  was  equal  to  anything.  Ons  is  astounded  that 
after  certain  chapters  or  passages,  he  could  not  put 
it  through,  that  invention  should  flag,  sequence  fail, 
and  the  whole  thing  shortly  lack  the  sweep,  the 
strong  hand  of  a  master.  Comparing  him  to  Scott 
and  Dumas,  Mr.  Copeland  has  said:  "He  would 
not,  if  he  could,  have  written  like  them;  he  could 
not,  if  he  would,  have  imagined  and  invented  and 
swung  the  whole  thing  along  as  they  did.  They 
with  all  their  faults,  are  great  romantics;  he,  with 
all  his  gifts  and  graces,  is  a  little  romantic;  and 
the  many  well-meaning  persons  who  range  him  per- 
sistently with  Scott  do  him  nothing  but  disservice." 
Even  supposing  other  things  had  been  equal, 
Stevenson  had  not  the  health  for  the  great  books — 
look  at  his  picture  and  then  look  at  those  of  Scott 
and  Dumas.  But  Stevenson  was  a  little  romantic 
not  only  because  he  lacked  physical  energy,  but 
because  his  peculiar  nervous  temperament,  his  rapid 
enthusiasms,  forbade  him  to  regulate  and  to  pre- 


ILL   HEALTH    AND   AMBITION     141 

serve  what  energy  he  had.  In  this  respect  his  friend, 
John  Addington  Symonds,  makes  a  most  interesting 
contrast  to  him.  A  much  sicker  man  than  Stevenson 
although  normally  possessed  of  a  little  more  bodily 
vigor,  Symonds  brought  to  bear  on  one  of  the  very 
greatest  of  literary  tasks  a  regulated  persistence  as 
well  as  his  supreme  literary  skill.  But  in  his  own  case 
Stevenson  could  not  reconcile  the  two  qualities.  He 
remarked  of  Symonds,  whom  he  met  on  arriving  at 
Davos  in  November,  that  he  was  "much  of  an  inva- 
lid in  mind  and  character."  Symonds,  who  died  in 
the  year  before  Stevenson,  had  planned  and  was  see- 
ing through  to  completion  the  seven  volumes  of  the 
Renaissance  in  Italy,  a  monumental  work  that  shows 
effort  of  a  kind  beyond  Stevenson's  capability. 

It  is  doubtful  if  Stevenson  really  appreciated  the 
value  of  the  qualities  he  lacked.  Eight  years 
later,  when  he  began  to  revive  at  Saranac  after  a 
long  series  of  complete  prostrations,  his  physician, 
Doctor  Trudeau,  took  him  into  his  laboratory  to 
show  him  some  of  the  experiments  that  he  had  been 
making  year  by  year  in  his  lifelong  study  of  tuber- 
culosis. Doctor  Trudeau,  himself  a  victim  of  the 
disease,  who  had  for  years  lived  at  Saranac  and  with 
the  utmost  patience,  in  the  face  of  almost  over- 
whelming difficulty,  was  then  beginning  to  make 
those  practical  discoveries  which  have  placed  him 
among  the  great  benefactors  of  mankind/  could  yet 

xDr.  Edward  L.  Trudeau  went  to  the  Adirondacks  in  the 
same  year  in  which  Stevenson  had  been  "ordered  south,"  1873. 
In  1884  he  founded  at  Saranac  Lake  the  Adirondack  Cottage 
Sanitarium,  the  first  American  institution  attempting  climatic 


142  STEVENSON 

gain  little  sympathetic  interest  from  Stevenson. 
The  romance  of  such  labor  in  science  was  beyond 
the  comprehension  of  the  writer  of  tales.  Incor- 
rigible as  ever,  Stevenson  consented  to  make  but  a 
humorous  comment:  "Well,  Trudeau,  your  lamp 
may  be  very  brilliant,  but  it  smells  to  me  too  much 
of  oil." 

Now  to  write  long  romances  without  oil  has 
never  been  done.  Stevenson,  trying  it,  failed  most 
of  the  time.  For  it  was  the  irony  of  his  tempera- 
ment that  just  the  steady  flame,  seemingly  so  in- 
compatible with  his  brilliance  at  its  best,  was  the 
one  requisite  to  carry  out  the  sort  of  work  he  was 
henceforth  always  embarking  on. 

But  given  his  temperament,  and  we  must  remem- 
ber that  it  is  for  this  we  read  Stevenson  and  this 
which  he  was  chiefly  intent  on  expressing,  it  is 
doubtful  whether  he  could  have  done  better  than  he 
did  by  scrupulous  attention  to  his  "case,"  and  by 
cautious  regular  expenditure  of  his  energy.  Like 
most  affairs  in  invalidism,  the  matter  is  paradoxical. 
A  few  things  are  certain,  however.  He  carried  his 
objection  to  "cowardly  and  prudential  maxims"  a 
trifle  too  far.  He  never  allowed  himself  to  be  an 
exception  to  his  own  doctrine  and  the  result  was 
that  as  an  invalid  he  was  never  a  success.    For,  if 


and  open  air  treatment  of  pulmonary  diseases.  In  1894,  the 
year  of  Stevenson's  death,  Doctor  Trudeau  founded  the  Sara- 
nac  Laboratory  for  the  Study  of  Tuberculosis,  the  first  re- 
search laboratory  for  the  purpose  in  America.  The  prolonga- 
tion of  his  own  life  is,  as  I  write,  a  marvelous  tribute  to  the 
science  which  he  helped  to  inaugurate. 


ILL   HEALTH    AND    AMBITION     143 

he  tried  religiously  now  and  again  to  start  on  the 
road  toward  becoming  a  cure,  he  was  almost  cer- 
tain to  upset  all  he  had  gained  by  an  unwise,  though 
always  generous-minded,  bit  of  conduct.  What  had 
appeared  to  his  physicians  as  by  no  means  a  dan- 
gerous condition  became  shortly  a  most  dangerous 
one;  and  until  Stevenson  discovered  in  1888,  in  the 
South  Pacific,  a  climate  where  his  random  ways  of 
life  and  lack  of  foresight  were  not  ruinous,  he  was 
never  in  as  good  condition  as,  with  steady  regular 
care,  he  might  well  have  been.  The  story  of  these 
years,  as  told  in  his  letters  and  in  Balfour's  Life, 
will  appear  to  even  the  casual  observer  a  series  of 
mistakes.  That  Stevenson  turned  out  an  immense 
amount  of  literary  work  meanwhile  does  not  blind 
one  to  this  fact.  Precautions  which  even  a  com- 
paratively robust  case  should  have  taken  scru- 
pulously, Stevenson,  weighing  little  more  than  one 
hundred  pounds,  nervous  and  sensitive  to  every 
wind  that  blew,  continually  neglected,  or  found  him- 
self forced  by  circumstances  to  neglect. 


II 


Thus,  after  the  first  winter  in  Davos,  where  he 
had  been  steadily  improving,  he  returned  in  April 
to  France  and  Scotland  against  his  physician's 
orders.  Mrs.  Stevenson  had  found  the  elevation 
of  Davos  very  uncongenial.  After  the  second  winter, 
during  which  she  was  ill,  he  therefore  returned  to 
Scotland  again.    All  the  good  of  two  seasons  was 


144  STEVENSON 

undone.  Stevenson  spent  the  summer  in  miserable 
health,  and  the  story  of  the  following  winter  on  the 
Riviera  illustrates  at  once  the  folly  and  the  bravery 
of  his  behavior.  His  cousin  Bob  took  him  to  Mar- 
seilles in  September,  1882.  At  the  time,  he  was 
fully  resolved  to  exert  every  effort  toward  recovery 
and  had  made  up  his  mind  to  keep  out  of  England 
for  at  least  three  years.  But  everything  went  wrong. 
He  chose  a  bad  locality  near  Marseilles,  began  to 
have  hemorrhages,  and  fled  to  Nice.  For  a  week, 
his  wife,  who  had  lacked  ready  money  to  close  the 
villa  and  follow  him,  received  no  word  of  his  ar- 
rival and  was  completely  at  sea  as  to  his  where- 
abouts. She  has  told  the  tale  in  a  remarkable  letter 
to  John  Addington  Symonds  included  in  Sir  Sidney 
Colvin's  collection.  Like  Shelley,  Stevenson  had  the 
ability  of  genius  for  getting  into  peculiar  situations 
that  kept  him  temperamentally  stirred  up,  though 
not  as  a  result  of  his  opinions,  but  usually  rather 
because  of  the  condition  of  his  wardrobe  or  of  his 
failure  to  have  enough  money  on  hand  to  remove 
the  suspicions  of  some  landlord.  This  particular 
episode  was  followed  by  a  return  to  Marseilles  in 
order  to  sublet  their  villa,  a  second  visit  to  Nice  and 
a  final  settling  down  at  the  end  of  March,  1883, 
at  Hyeres  in  Chalet  La  Solitude.  Here  for  nine 
months  things  went  comparatively  well,  and  Steven- 
son recorded  later  that  he  was  happier  than  at  any 
other  time  in  his  life.  The  air  on  this  part  of  the  Ri- 
viera has  an  unequaled  refreshing  mellowness,  ex- 
cept during  a  month  or  two  in  the  summer,  which 


ILL   HEALTH   AND   AMBITION     145 

Stevenson  spent  at  Royat.  The  scenery  is  among  the 
most  varied  and  beautiful  in  Europe.  Stevenson's 
phrase,  "a  garden  like  a  fairy  story  and  a  view  like 
a  classical  landscape/'  seems  to  sum  it  up. 

This  interim  of  good  health  lasted  until  January, 
1884,  when  he  had  the  most  serious  illness  of  his 
life,  and  from  the  effects  of  which  he  can  hardly 
be  said  to  have  ever  recovered.  At  all  events,  it 
began  a  series  of  attacks  which  lasted  steadily  till 
four  years  later  at  Saranac.  Charles  Baxter  and 
W.  E.  Henley  had  come  for  a  visit,  and  because  La 
Solitude  was  too  small  for  comfort,  the  Stevensons 
went  with  them  to  Nice.  There  Louis  came  down 
with  acute  congestion  of  the  lungs  and  kidneys.  His 
life  was  despaired  of.  But  Bob  Stevenson  arrived 
from  Paris  and  did  wonders  in  keeping  up  the  sick 
man's  spirits  as  well  as  those  of  his  wife.  After 
they  returned  to  La  Solitude  in  February,  Stevenson 
had  only  a  few  weeks'  respite  before  he  was  again 
at  death's  door.  The  immediate  occasion  of  this 
attack  seems  to  have  been  a  bonfire  celebration  in 
his  garden  over  the  indictment  for  libel  of  a  certain 
London  editor.  With  their  devoted  French  servant, 
Valentine  Roch,  the  Stevensons  danced  about  the 
fire  in  the  cold  night  air.  The  next  day  Louis  was 
ill  with  sciatica  followed  by  a  violent  hemorrhage. 
At  just  this  time  an  epidemic  of  Egyptian  ophthalmia 
broke  out  in  the  locality.  He  contracted  it,  and  now 
lay  in  a  darkened  room,  with  a  bandage  over  his 
eyes,  sciatica  racking  his  limbs,  and  his  right  arm 
bound  to  his  side  as  a  precaution  against  another 


146  STEVENSON 

hemorrhage.  His  frame  of  mind  under  these  con- 
ditions his  wife  has  recorded  in  the  preface  of  The 
Dynamiter.  Thoroughly  discouraged  by  finding  that 
she  could  not  read  to  him  in  the  darkened  room,  she 
remarked  ironically  that  she  supposed  he  would 
regard  even  this  as  for  the  best.  Stevenson  replied 
that  it  was  just  what  he  was  about  to  say.  But 
genius  and  Providence  turn  everything  to  account. 
Mrs.  Stevenson  amused  her  husband  by  telling  him 
stories.  The  Dynamiter,  their  joint  work,  had  its 
origin  in  this  sick-room. 

After  this  illness,  the  Riviera  became  so  danger- 
ous from  an  epidemic  of  cholera  that  the  Steven- 
sons,  abandoning  their  good  resolution  to  live  in  a 
climate  advantageous  to  Louis's  disease,  started  by 
slow  stages  for  England,  and  took  up  quarters  at 
the  end  of  July,  1884,  at  Richmond.  Another  rea- 
son for  this  step  was  the  serious  condition  of  his 
father's  health.  Moving  in  September  to  Bourne- 
mouth on  the  Channel,  where  the  air  is  often  soft, 
though  damp,  they  lived  in  lodgings  till  April,  1885, 
and  then,  till  August,  1887,  in  the  house  they  called 
Skerryvore,  a  gift  from  Thomas  Stevenson  to  his 
daughter-in-law.  During  these  three  years  in  Eng- 
land Stevenson  was  forced  by  continued  illness  to 
lead  a  very  careful  existence.  His  letters  record  a 
succession  of  colds,  "hoasts,"  "thundering  influ- 
enzas," "liver  and  slight  bleeding,"  hemorrhage, 
fever,  chills,  and  gloom — often  in  the  gayest  man- 
ner. Housed  or  in  bed  a  large  part  of  the  time, 
"old,  and  fagged,  and  chary  of  speech,"  not  talking 


ILL    HEALTH    AND    AMBITION     147 

aloud,  in  fact,  except  for  a  few  hours  of  an  evening, 
he  was  still  able  to  continue  his  literary  work,  as  he 
had  done  at  Davos  and  Hyeres.  So  positive  an 
energy  is  the  will  to  write. 

But  this  state  of  affairs  could  not  have  continued 
much  longer,  and  after  his  father's  death  in  May, 
1887,  it  was  decided  to  see  what  certain  American 
resorts  would  do  for  him.  With  his  mother  and 
Valentine  Roch,  the  party  reached  New  York  in 
September.  As  before,  he  had  felt  benefit  from 
the  voyage.  But  while  his  wife  hastened  to  Saranac 
to  engage  a  house,  he  became  ill  at  Newport  where 
he  had  gone  to  visit  the  Fairchilds.  From  the 
first  of  October  until  April  of  the  following  year 
he  was  at  Saranac  in  the  care  of  Doctor  Trudeau. 
It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  Doctor  Trudeau  found 
in  Stevenson  no  signs  of  actual  tuberculosis.1  His 
disease  of  the  lungs  and  throat  had  probably  been 
of  the  fibroid  type  and  was  continued,  not  by  the 
inroads  of  the  tubercular  bacillus,  but  by  erosion  of 
old  scars  and  congestions  from  other  causes.  As 
all  readers  of  Mr.  Balfour's  Life  know,  Stevenson 
did  not  die  of  consumption,  but  of  a  suffusion  of 
blood  in  his  brain.  It  may  be  said  with  all  likeli- 
hood of  truth  that  a  few  years  of  continuous  careful 
regimen  at  Davos,  or  on  the  Riveria,  or  at  Saranac, 
would  long  before  have  so  improved  his  condition 
that  the  terrible  experiences  of  the  years  from  1880 
to  1888  could  have  been  avoided.    To  their  weaken- 


1  According  to  Doctor  Trudeau's  personal  statement  to  the 
writer. 


148  STEVENSON 

ing  effect  and  perhaps  to  inheritance,  his  death  six 
years  later  seems  to  have  been  due. 

The  winter  at  Saranac  was  the  beginning  of  this 
new,  though  short,  lease  of  life;  and  when  he  left 
there  in  April  it  was  with  sufficient  energy  to  under- 
take the  journey  to  California  and  to  embark  on 
the  South  Sea  cruise. 

These  are  the  main  facts  of  Stevenson's  long  ill- 
ness. I  have  detailed  them  thus  at  length,  for  they 
are  the  background  of  his  life  and  of  his  work. 
They  are  in  the  texture  of  his  philosophy. 

It  was  during  this  period  that  he  wrote  most  of 
the  books  by  which  he  is  now  known;  and  I  shall 
give  a  list  of  them  here  to  accompany  the  facts  of 
his  illness,  for  the  two  together  constitute  the  mir- 
acle of  his  career.  At  Davos  and  in  Scotland,  Novem- 
ber, 1880,  to  September,  1882,  he  had  written  The 
Merry  Men,  "Thrawn  Janet,"  "The  Body  Snatcher," 
the  essays  on  "Pepys,"  "Talks  and  Talkers''  and 
several  other  papers,  The  Silverado  Squatters,  "The 
Treasure  of  Franchard"  and  Treasure  Island.  He 
had  seen  through  the  press  with  all  the  labor  of 
proof  correcting,  Virginibus  Puerisque,  Familiar 
Studies  of  Men  and  Books,and  New  Arabian  Nights 
in  two  volumes.  At  Hyeres,  March,  1883,  to  June, 
1884  (and  please  recollect  the  circumstances  of  those 
sixteen  months),  he  had  been  at  work  on  The  Black 
Arrow,  printed  in  Young  Folks'  during  the  summer 
of  1883,  Prince  Otto,  some  of  the  poems  in  Under- 
woods' and  A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses,  and  several 
of  his  most  charming  essays,  such  as  "A  Penny 


ILL   HEALTH    AND    AMBITION     149 

Plain"  and  "The  Character  of  Dogs."  On  January 
first,  1884,  he  boasted  of  a  total  of  four  hundred  and 
sixty-five  pounds,  no  shillings,  sixpence  for  the 
past  twelve  months.  At  Bournemouth,  July,  1884, 
to  September,  1887,  he  had  written  More  New 
Arabian  Nights,  "Markheim,"  "Ollala,"  Strange 
Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,  Kidnapped,  Me- 
moir of  Fleeming  Jenkin,  and  many  essays,  among 
them  "Pastoral"  and  "The  Manse,"  included  in 
Memories  and  Portraits  which  he  saw  through  the 
press  after  reaching  America.  Prince  Otto,  A 
Child's  Garden  of  Verses,  and  the  volume  called 
The  Merry  Men  and  Other  Tales  were  also  pub- 
lished during  this  period.  At  Saranac,  October, 
1887,  to  April,  1888,  he  was  writing  monthly  ar- 
ticles for  Scribner's  Magazine  and  starting  The 
Master  of  Ballantrae,  which  ran  in  Scribner's  Maga- 
zine from  November,  1888,  to  October,  1889.1  He 
wrote  these  things,  as  he  has  said,  in  bed  and  out 
of  it,  in  hemorrhages,  in  sickness,  when  torn  by 
coughing  and  when  his  head  swam  for  weakness. 
Had  he  not,  for  so  long,  "won  his  wager  and  re- 
covered his  glove?" 

Ill 

There  are,  however,  so  many  different  views  of 
the  relation  of  genius  and  its  ambitions  to  ill  health 
that  it  may  be  well  to  make  certain  further  qualifi- 

1  For  a  nearly  complete  list  of  Stevenson's  writings,  see 
Balfour's  Life,  Vol.  II,  Appendix  F.  See  also  the  very  inter- 
esting and  complete  Bibliography  of  the  works  of  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson,  by  Col.  W.  F.  Prideaux,  C.  S.  I. 


150  STEVENSON 

cations  for  Stevenson's  case.  It  is  said,  for  example, 
that  a  disease  of  the  lungs  is  not  always  a  depressing 
disease,  and  that  in  fact  it  is  sometimes  stimulating. 
This  is  true ;  but  that  it  added  stimulation  to  Steven- 
son's normal  genius  is  unlikely.  And  there  are,  in 
this  connection,  several  fallacies,  medical  and  senti- 
mental, which  it  is  well  to  avoid. 

First,  Stevenson  does  not  belong  in  any  possible 
list  of  those  men  whose  originality  appears  to  have 
some  source  in  their  physical  and  mental  defects, 
whose  creative  power  seems  to  result  from  a  cer- 
tain degenerate  sensitiveness.  For  while  it  is  true 
that  many  artists  have  suffered,  like  millions  of 
people  not  artists,  from  some  undermining  disease 
or  habit,  very  few  have  found  out  their  artistic  capa- 
bilities through  the  action  of  ill  health,  or  in  the 
excitement  produced,  let  us  say,  by  alcohol.  After 
a  careful  sifting  of  much  evidence  in  this  matter, 
there  appears  to  the  writer  little  warrant  for  con- 
necting casually  the  artistic  nature  with  the  un- 
sound body.  In  the  face  of  a  thousand  healthy 
exceptions,  no  such  theory,  if  proposed,  is  really 
tenable.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is,  of  course,  equally 
impossible  to  say  that  health  is  a  fundamental  con- 
dition of  art;  and  such  a  theory,  if  proposed,  would 
be  untenable  in  the  face  of  significant  exceptions. 
All  one  can  assert  is  that  the  sort  of  health  which 
means  nervous  energy  is  usually  necessary  to  any 
sustained  artistic  effort  and  that  the  artistic  tempera- 
ment has  usually  been  born  and  bred  in  that  sort  of 
health,  whatever  circumstances  later  surround  it. 


ILL    HEALTH    AND    AMBITION     151 

Secondly,  it  is  sometimes  pointed  out  that  it  is 
not  invariably  harder  or  more  heroic  for  the  un- 
healthy man  to  do  literary  work  than  for  the 
healthy,  since  the  limitations  imposed  by  invalidism, 
if  it  is  not  some  form  of  nervous  exhaustion,  often 
serve  but  to  increase  a  man's  devotion  to  the  one 
interest  remaining  to  him.  Now  it  is  true  that  art 
is  mistress,  that  a  man  does  not  so  naturally  incline 
to  give  up  writing  as  he  might  a  business  or  a  pro- 
fession for  ill  health ;  and  in  this  sense  ill  health  may 
have  occasionally  benefited  the  world  by  increasing 
the  leisure  of  an  author  who  previously  was  full  of 
other  duties.  But  it  could  hardly  help  the  quality 
of  his  work.  It  could  hardly  increase  the  number 
of  those  authors  whom  Carlyle  wished  to  pay  for 
what  they  had  not  written.  And  to  this  case  Steven- 
son is  no  exception.  He  wrote  too  much.  Like 
every  earnest  modern  author  he  wrote  for  money. 
No  one  who  loves  and  knows  him  would  dream  of 
excusing  him,  on  the  ground  of  his  invalidism,  by 
saying  that  at  all  events  he  did  his  best.  The  words 
would  be  curiously  ironical.  His  best  is  of  the  very 
finest  and  brooks  no  such  condescension;  but  he 
wrote  a  great  deal  in  those  hours  of  suffering  that 
could  not  be  his  best,  and  he  persisted  doggedly  in 
putting  it  forth  along  with  the  other  and  sometimes 
in  believing  it  worthy.  So  easily  is  the  will  to  write 
led  into  temptation.  In  brief,  it  is  probable  that 
his  health  so  limited  other  activities  that  he  devoted 
more  of  his  energy  to  writing  than  was  good  for  his 
art.    In  his  paradoxical  case — and  the  case  of  the 


152  STEVENSON 

invalid  is,  as  we  have  remarked,  often  a  paradox — 
the  energy  which  was  necessary  to  produce  his  art 
at  all  somewhat  weakened  its  quality.  If  he  often 
worked  with  great  skill  in  the  face  of  weariness  and 
sickness  he  was  probably  supported  not  so  much 
by  moral  fortitude  as  by  that  peculiar  nervous  ardor 
which  literary  labor  develops;  and  thus  he  was  led 
into  the  temptation  to  write  under  circumstances 
when  the  vision  of  his  purpose  grew  vague,  grew 
to  be  a  sort  of  whimsical  license  to  ramble  hither 
and  thither,  instead  of  a  definite  and  inspiring  guide. 
Thirdly,  we  must  not  imagine  Stevenson  to  be 
one  of  those  natures  whom  disease  hardens,  who 
go  with  gritted  teeth  to  their  tasks.  For  the  won- 
derful thing  about  his  character  was  his  ability  to 
escape  the  cankerous  effects  of  sickness  and  to  retain 
his  enthusiasms  near  at  hand.  The  positive  idea  to 
realize  is  that  Stevenson, '  like  most  sensitive  and 
enthusiastic  natures,  enjoyed  getting  as  much  action 
or  emotion,  or  what  people  call  interest,  out  of  the 
circumstances  of  his  life  as  he  possibly  could.  So 
he  liked  to  exaggerate,  as  a  satirist  likes  to  ridicule, 
for  the  sake  of  appreciating  a  certain  aspect  of  a 
thing  more  sharply.  He  exaggerated  now  his  woes 
and  now  his  sense  of  superiority  to  them,  in  order 
to  profit  doubly  in  his  own  esteem.  Who  has  not 
done  this?  But  who  has  succeeded  so  well  as  Ste- 
venson in  painting  a  picture  of  his  troubles,  at  once 
painfully  vivid  and  positively  cheerful?  Stevenson 
had  undoubtedly  a  glorious  capacity  for  trouble. 
It  never  dwarfed,  though  I  believe  it  somewhat 


ILL    HEALTH    AND    AMBITION     153 

diffused,  his  character.  It  is  in  this  respect  that  he 
is  different  from  most  men.  Trouble  for  most  men 
is  thoroughly  troublesome,  and  little  else.  It  does 
not  transmute  itself  into  anything  positive,  any- 
thing, at  least,  which  does  not  savor  of  martyrdom 
and  self-sacrifice  or  of  self -satis  factions  of  a  nega- 
tive order.  Stevenson  is  always  high  on  the  positive 
side  of  life.  His  sharpest  satire  has  the  rare  quality 
of  being  always  constructive;  and  so  fearful  was 
he  of  destroying  any  of  the  positive  illusions  of 
youth  that  he  withheld  from  publication  that  essay, 
printed  only  the  other  day,  on  "The  Choice  of  a 
Profession" — an  essay  which  any  one,  hoping  to 
do  anything  positive  in  art  in  this  commercialized 
age,  would  do  well  to  read  forthwith. 

Finally  then,  in  view  of  the  facts  and  opinions 
just  cited,  it  would  appear  to  make  little  difference 
whether  one  believes  with  such  a  critic  as  Mr.  Frank 
Swinnerton  that  Stevenson's  "peculiar  nervous 
brilliance"  is  partly  due  to  his  delicate  health,  as  it 
undoubtedly  was,  or  whether  one  prefers  to  say  that 
genius  is  so  positive  an  energy  that  it  can  always 
transform  a  certain  amount  of  sickness  and  irrita- 
tion into  fuel  for  its  purposes.  Neither  statement 
greatly  affects  the  central  fact,  the  extraordinary 
will  to  write  which  Stevenson  at  all  times  displayed. 
Nor  does  it  affect  the  unforgettable  lesson  of  this 
whole  matter,  the  close  relationship  in  Stevenson 
of  character  and  genius  as  expressed  by  this  will  to 
write.  It  is  sheer  sophistry  to  argue  on  the  one 
hand  that  courage  is  shown  only  by  the  author  who 


154  STEVENSON 

labors  in  the  face  of  sharp  physical  pain,  or  on  the 
other  that  genius  requires  no  support  from  courage. 
Let  us  repeat  that  Stevenson's  genius  and  his  cour- 
age were,  like  the  moral  doctrine  that  he  derived 
from  them,  continually  combined  in  positive  action. 
His  courage  lay  not  in  outfacing  obstacles,  but  in 
being  cheerful  under  ordinary  circumstances.  In 
the  face  of  obstacles  most  of  us  can  assume  some 
sort  of  grin  and  play-act  a  noble  part  for  the  mo- 
ment. Doubtless,  kind  friends,  who  for  the  rest 
of  the  time  are  bored  to  death  with  glumness,  will 
tell  us  that  in  such  moments  our  real  character  comes 
out.  If  this  were  true,  we  had  better  seek  trouble 
daily.  But  Stevenson  preaches  a  saner  doctrine — 
the  cultivation  of  a  positive,  not  a  latent  courage,  a 
courage  which  is  effective  in  the  face  of  three  meals 
to-day,  and  the  funeral  baked  meats  to-morrow.  It 
is,  more  especially,  a  courage  that  creates  its  own 
adventures,  even  with  a  touch  of  whimsical  bravado 
after  the  manner  of  Don  Quixote,  Stevenson's  con- 
fessed prototype. 

Therefore,  the  important  point  to  perceive  in 
connection  with  the  facts  of  Stevenson's  health  is 
that  though  the  character  of  his  work  was  harmed 
by  his  health,  it  is  mainly  in  the  form,  the  coherence 
of  certain  books,  rarely  in  the  tone  or  in  the  out- 
look on  life  of  the  writer.  Above  the  ills  of  these 
years,  recorded  now  humorously  and  now  as  mere 
family  news  in  the  letters  of  Sir  Sidney  Colvin's 
second  volume,  the  spirit  of  Stevenson  sails  indom- 
itable.   So  it  seemed  to  the  friends  at  his  bedside, 


ILL   HEALTH    AND   AMBITION     155 

and  so  it  seems  to  us  in  reading  the  books  he  then 
wrote.  How  great  was  this  achievement,  and  how 
noble  the  energy  that  accomplished  it  is  a  thought 
not  to  be  discounted  in  any  impersonal  estimate, 
like  that  which  follows,  of  his  books  as  works  of  art. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  ROMANCE 


ONE  of  the  changes  that  comes  over  the  char- 
acter of  Stevenson's  work  with  his  confine- 
ment by  ill  health  is,  as  we  have  remarked,  a 
diminution  of  the  autobiographic  temper.  Until 
1880  he  had  largely  concerned  himself  with  his  per- 
sonal experiences  and  opinions.  Until  1880  one 
might  construct  from  his  writings  an  account,  al- 
most year  by  year,  of  his  employments  and  purposes. 
But  after  1880  this  would  no  longer  be  possible. 
Except  for  a  few  sketches  of  life  at  Davos  and  his 
journal  of  South  Sea  cruises,  the  record  is  as  in- 
direct as  that  in  the  novels  and  essays  of  Thackeray. 
I  say  indirect,  for  I  would  not  imply  that  Steven- 
son stopped  talking  of  himself.  He  was  still  intent 
on  painting  life  in  the  colors  of  his  own  mind  and 
he  never  made  the  mistake  of  trying  to  depersonalize 
his  style  or  to  eliminate  his  own  character  from  the 
atmosphere  of  his  books.  But  when  Stevenson  took 
to  writing  romances,  it  means,  first,  that  he  blended 
his  feelings,  his  experience,  his  philosophy,  with 
more  objective  purposes  and,  second,  that  he  was 

156 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        157 

forming  literary  ambitions  independent  of  his  own 
comings  and  goings  which  he  could  hardly  regard 
during  those  eight  years  of  illness  from  1880  to 
1888  as  matter  to  his  hand.  It  did  not  mean  that 
Stevenson  began  to  write  about  the  external  world 
of  the  novels  of  society.  His  realism  is  all  of  his 
own  making.  Like  the  romantic  poet,  he  has  a 
world  about  him  that  is  his  own,  and  fiction  is  his 
more  diffuse  mode  of  self-expression,  or  of  self-en- 
tertainment, during  his  long  period  of  bad  weather. 


II 


A  romance  is  primarily  a  flight  of  fancy.  It  is 
in  this  sense  a  very  personal  matter  and  yet  not 
always  personally  controllable.  It  is  something  like 
a  dream.  It  takes  on  its  local  color,  not  .from  cor- 
responding accurately  to  any  corner  of  the  real 
world,  but  from  being  spun  out  of  the  author's  pure 
imagination.  The  author  of  romances  must  be  true 
primarily  to  himself,  to  the  inner  actuality  of  his 
mind.  He  must  be  ruled  by  the  habits  of  his  fancy 
and  not  too  much  by  the  facts  of  the  outer  world. 
In  telling  a  story  he  is  as  much  like  one  trying  to 
recall  a  vision  as  he  is  like  one  telling  what  he  has 
seen  with  his  own  eyes.  Stevenson's  romantic 
stories  have  this  peculiar  texture.  They  have  the 
sound  of  stories  told  out  of  a  dream.  There  is  a 
marvelous  unreality  which  is  yet  in  no  respect  a 
falseness  and  which  one  accepts  in  place  of  reality 


158  STEVENSON 

without  looking  back.  Setting,  action,  sequence, 
motive,  denouement,  the  whole  fabrication  in  such 
stories  as  The  Merry  Men,  Dr.  Jekyll,  "The  Pa- 
vilion on  the  Links,"  or  even  The  Master  of  Ballan- 
trae,  is  a  piece  of  transcendent  make-believe.  It  is, 
in  fact,  very  much  like  Stevenson  himself — the 
child  who  had  told  wonder-tales  all  day  long,  who 
had  played  endless  games  of  "supposing"  alone  in 
the  corners  of  his  father's  house,  and  who  had  kept 
on  playing  all  his  life. 

In  Stevenson's  letters  and  in  his  essays  on  his  own 
disposition  as  a  writer  of  romances,  he  has  pretty 
well  explained  himself.  So,  in  his  romances  them- 
selves, we  are  prepared  to  see  a  man  who  has  long 
been  enlarging  the  place  of  his  imagination  and 
who  now  continues  to  do  this  in  maturity,  not  as  a 
novelist  ordinarily  does  by  peopling  his  imagination 
with  realities  and  by  letting  in  as  much  of  the  light 
of  day  as  he  can  command,  but  rather  by  finding 
out  the  strange  beings  who  are,  so  to  speak,  already 
living  behind  the  shadows  of  that  unexplored  and 
inexhaustible  region.  To  preserve  the  shadows,  to 
preserve  the  zest  of  their  exploration,  to  keep  the 
whole  adventure  in  the  atmosphere  of  its  original  oc- 
currence in  fancy  and  never  to  let  it  issue  into  the 
raw  air  of  actuality,  is  the  Stevensonian  purpose. 
It  had  been  the  unconscious  purpose  of  little  R.  L.  S. 
in  child's  play. 

Stevenson  was  never  a  realist  in  the  narrow  sense 
of  the  word.  The  young  man  who  carried  his  note- 
book in  his  pocket  and  who  spent  hours  studying 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        159 

"at  first  hand"  in  the  forest  of  Fontainebleau  or 
along  the  rocks  at  Anstruther  was  also  intent  on 
making  over  the  object  that  it  might  better  accord 
with  his  dreams;  and  it  is  entirely  characteristic 
that,  as  he  began  to  write  romances,  he  should 
also  proceed,  in  various  essays  and  letters,  to  warn 
against  the  so-called  realistic  school  as  dangerous 
and  baneful.  "The  danger  is  lest,  in  seeking  to 
draw  the  normal,  a  man  should  draw  the  dull,  and 
write  the  novel  of  society  instead  of  the  romance 
of  man."  The  essays  called  "Lantern  Bearers," 
"A  Novel  of  Dumas's,"  "A  Humble  Remon- 
strance," "Penny  Plain,"  "A  Note  on  Realism," 
all  but  one  written  during  these  years  at 
Davos  and  Hyeres,  where  he  was  also  writing 
his  first  long  stories,  are  his  emphatic  insistence 
on  the  half-shut  eye  against  "the  dazzle  and  con- 
fusion of  reality,"  as  the  artistic  method  par  excel- 
lence, whether  a  man  "reasons  or  creates." 

Truth  exists  within  the  mind.  Realism,  as  a 
purpose  in  literature,  only  pretends  that  it  exists 
exclusively  without.  Truth  is  what  one  aims  at  in 
all  art.  Realism  is  only  a  technical  fidelity  to  the 
external  world  which  leads  a  writer  to  seek  therein 
something  other  than  the  beautiful.  Impersonality  in 
art  is  but  half-truth.  It  is  always  possible  that  mere 
truth  of  fact  may  be  truth  without  charm.  Charm 
and  beauty  are  the  positive,  the  personal  virtues  of 
artistic  insight;  dulness  and  ugliness  are  the  nega- 
tive and  impersonal  qualities  of  things  themselves. 
For  a  man  of  romantic  imagination,  life  untinged 


160  STEVENSON 

with  beauty  is  not  life-like.  What  we  look  for  in 
a  book,  says  Stevenson,  is  some  projection  of  the 
author.  Charm  is  a  personal  emanation — "the  one 
excuse  and  breath  of  art."  So  in  his  narratives, 
as  in  other  writings,  it  is  always  Stevenson's  inten- 
tion to  weave  a  spell  of  style  and  to  capture  the 
mind  by  fancy.  This  practise  leads  him  to  say 
emphatically  that  "true  realism,  always  and  every- 
where, is  that  of  the  poet's." 

If  a  romance  is  a  flight  of  poetic  fancy,  it  must 
lead  to  a  place  somewhat  removed  from  the  world 
— and  one  is  inclined  to  add  that  this  is  the  ro- 
manticist's notion  about  any  piece  of  reading  worthy 
of  the  name.  A  book  is  a  place  by  itself.  It  is  not 
just  a  mirror  of  the  world.  It  is  like  something  in 
life,  maybe ;  but  it  is  not  merely  a  part  of  life.  It  is 
another,  an  additional,  resort.  We  know  our  way 
round  in  its  geography,  not  because  of  our  experi- 
ence in  the  outer  world,  but  because  we  have,  each 
of  us  in  our  heads,  a  small  tract  of  the  same  en- 
chanted region  from  which  to  explore  further. 
From  this  the  writer  of  romances  starts  and  soon 
emerges,  one  can  hardly  tell  how,  into  his  special 
country.  Strange  colors  play  over  the  landscape. 
The  vestiges  of  logic  disappear  and  are  not  re- 
gretted; the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  place  can  be 
at  once  less  real  and  more  vivid  than  those  of  life, 
just  as  the  sensations  of  a  dream  are  more  vivid 
than  those  of  any  given  waking  moment ;  and  though 
memory  refuses  to  divulge  them  accurately  to  con- 
sciousness, they  somehow  retain  a  glamourous  bril- 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        161 

liance  and  a  far  suggestion  to  which  reality  has  no 
parallel. 

Yet  it  is  all  so  true.  For  this  place  is  the  creation 
of  a  strong  sense  within  us  for  what  is  fitting  as  dis- 
tinguished from  what  merely  is.  On  the  earth  are 
places  full  of  actual  deeds  and  memories.  But  the 
deeds  might  often  as  naturally  have  occurred  else- 
where, and  the  memories  usually  haunt  the  place 
only  by  that  sort  of  accident  which  makes  up  the 
realism  of  an  arbitrary  world.  In  the  enchanted 
region  of  romance,  the  longing  for  fitness  is  always 
being  satisfied.  There,  as  Stevenson  has  suggested, 
if  certain  dank  gardens  cry  aloud  for  murder,  the 
murder  is  properly  committed;  and  seacoasts  set 
apart  for  shipwreck  do  not  wait  long  for  the  event. 
According  to  the  laws  of  romance,  which  are  the 
laws  of  fitness  and  not  of  logic  and  morals,  true 
reality  consists  in  having  all  these  things  fit  to- 
gether as  they  should,  in  bringing  about  "the  mark- 
ing incident"  at  just  the  proper  time,  and  in  making 
"all  the  circumstances  of  the  tale  answer  one  to 
another  like  notes  in  music."  Obviously  the  fas- 
cination of  this  country  of  romance  is  not  in  the 
characters  and  consciences  and  morals  that  are  de- 
veloped there,  but  in  the  likely  adventures  of  the 
place,  and  also  especially  in  the  fact  that  we  are  the 
adventurers.  "Something  happens  as  we  desire  to 
have  it  happen  to  ourselves;  some  situation,  that 
we  have  long  dallied  with  in  fancy,  is  realized  in  the 
story  with  enticing  and  appropriate  details.  Then 
we  forget  the  characters;  then  we  push  the  hero 


162  STEVENSON 

aside ;  then  we  plunge  into  the  tale  in  our  own  person 
and  bathe  in  fresh  experience;  and  then,  and  then 
only,  do  we  say  that  we  have  been  reading  a  ro- 
mance."— "A  Gossip  on  Romance,"  Memories  and 
Portraits. 

It  was  no  doubt  so  that  things  had  happened  in 
Skeltdom,  and,  for  a  true  reader  like  Stevenson, 
would  happen  anywhere  in  story  books.  "What 
am  I?  What  are  life,  art,  letters,  the  world,  but 
what  my  Skelt  has  made  them?  He  stamped  him- 
self upon  my  immaturity.  The  world  was  plain 
before  I  knew  him,  a  poor  penny  world;  but  soon 
it  was  all  coloured  with  romance." — "A  Penny 
Plain,"  Memories  and  Portraits. 

To  understand  this,  one  must  certainly  know  how 
to  read — or  rather  to  listen,  for  a  romance  is  listened 
to,  rather  than  read.  It  is  the  tone  of  the  thing 
that  counts  most.  The  reader  must  surrender  him- 
self utterly.  Criticism  of  a  romance  and  of  the  ro- 
mantic temper  by  one  who  has  never  read  as,  for 
example,  Stevenson  himself  read,  would  be  pretty 
nearly  worthless ;  it  may  be  nearly  worthless  in  any 
case.  But  I  believe  that  the  best  criticism  of  Ste- 
venson's tales  is  in  such  pictures  as  he  draws  of  his 
evenings  with  some  favorite  book  like  the  Vicomte 
de  Bragelonne.  "I  would  return  in  the  early  night," 
he  says,  "from  one  of  my  patrols  with  the  shepherd 
(John  Todd) ;  a  friendly  face  would  meet  me  in 
the  door,  a  friendly  retriever  scurry  up-stairs  to 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        163 

fetch  my  slippers;  and  I  would  sit  down  with  the 
Vicomte  for  a  long,  silent,  solitary  lamplight  evening 
by  the  fire.  And  yet  I  know  not  why  I  call  it  silent, 
when  it  was  enlivened  with  such  a  clatter  of  horse- 
shoes, and  such  a  rattle  of  musketry,  and  such  a  stir 
of  talk;  or  why  I  call  those  evenings  solitary  in 
which  I  gained  so  many  friends.  I  would  rise 
from  my  book  and  pull  the  blind  aside,  and  see  the 
snow  and  the  glittering  hollies  chequer  a  Scotch 
garden,  and  the  winter  moonlight  brighten  the  white 
hills.  Thence  I  would  turn  again  to  that  crowded 
and  sunny  field  of  life  in  which  it  was  so  easy  to 
forget  myself,  my  cares,  and  my  surroundings;  a 
place  busy  as  a  city,  bright  as  a  theatre,  thronged 
with  memorable  faces,  and  sounding  with  delightful 
speech.  I  carried  the  thread  of  that  epic  into  my 
slumbers,  I  woke  with  it  unbroken,  I  rejoiced  to 
plunge  into  the  book  again  at  breakfast,  it  was  with 
a  pang  that  I  must  lay  it  down  and  turn  to  my  own 
labours.'* — "A  Novel  of  Dumas's,"  Memories  and 
Portraits. 

The  long  romance  is  of  all  books  the  most  en- 
thralling and  the  most  companionable,  and  it  was  not 
for  nothing  that  Stevenson  understood  so  instinc- 
tively its  fascination.  When  all  the  weaknesses  in 
his  own  fabrications  have  been  pointed  out,  traced 
to  his  bad  health  or  to  his  supposed  purposeless- 
ness,  it  still  remains  that  his  books  and  even  his 
fragments  of  books,  make  marvelous  reading  for 
those  not  too  much  concerned  with  getting  some- 


164  STEVENSON 

where.  If,  like  the  stories  one  tells  to  children,  or 
like  the  adventures  one  has  in  dreams,  they  do  not 
often  work  out  very  inevitably;  if  they  fade  or 
merely  stop;  if  the  sequence  of  adventures  is  de- 
cidedly haphazard,  and  the  characters  for  a  large 
part  of  the  time  do  not  appear  to  be  much  beyond 
their  clothes  and  a  quaint  phrase  or  two;  yet  each 
incident,  while  it  lasts,  is  enthralling;  the  situation 
and  the  scenery  are  ever  in  accord;  and  the  reader 
has  always  been  for  the  time  being  in  the  country 
of  his  own  imagination. 


Ill 


This  much  is  true  for  nearly  any  of  Stevenson's 
books,  especially  if  read  at  the  same  age  at  which 
Scott  and  Dumas  are  most  appreciated.  But  a  great 
deal  more  can  be  said  for  two  or  three;  and  for 
Treasure  Island,  though  confessedly  a  tale  written 
much  at  random,  there  is  more  to  say  than  any 
matter-of-fact  tongue  can  possibly  speak.1 

I  can  well  remember  the  first  time  I  read  that  al- 
most perfect  yarn.  I  was  twenty-five  years  old. 
I  had  somehow  missed  it  in  my  boyhood,  and  I  now 
came  on  it  while  I  was  teaching  in  the  United 
States  Naval  Academy  which,  as  every  one  knows, 
is  an  utterly  matter-of-fact  place  completely  sur- 
rounded by  the  seas  of  romance.  I  was  at  the  time 
steeped  in  the  practical  details  of  ships  and  their 


1  See    "My    First    Book,"    printed    as    an    introduction    to 
Treasure  Island  in  the  Biographical  Edition. 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        165 

history.  Moreover,  so  far  as  fiction  went,  I  had 
just  made  the  discovery,  in  the  Academy  library,  of 
Joseph  Conrad  and  his  true  romances  of  the  sea, 
which  at  once  became  and  have  remained  my  fa- 
vorite books  in  that  supreme  part  of  nature.  And 
one  day  I  picked  up  Treasure  Island  with  a  premoni- 
tion that  it  had  come  to  me,  alas,  too  late;  for  I 
knew  well  enough  what  the  story  was  about.  In- 
stead, I  launched  on  a  voyage  second  to  none.  I 
was  never  surer  that  I  had  really  got  somewhere  at 
last,  that  this  was  one  of  those  bits  of  geography 
from  which  no  traveler  willingly  returns,  which 
with  years  do  not  fade  in  his  mind,  which  bring 
the  conviction  that  he  has  again  seen  the  promised 
land  and  reassure  him  that  he  can  never  live  quite 
in  vain. 

Will  you  read  the  opening  pages  once  more.  It 
will  take  only  a  moment. 

THE  OLD  SEA  DOG  AT  THE  "ADMIRAL  BENBOW" 

"Squire  Trelawney,  Dr.  Livesey,  and  the  rest  of 
these  gentlemen  having  asked  me  to  write  down  the 
whole  particulars  about  Treasure  Island,  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end,  keeping  nothing  back  but  the 
bearings  of  the  island,  and  that  only  because  there 
is  still  treasure  not  yet  lifted,  I  take  up  my  pen  in 
the  year  of  grace  17 — ,  and  go  back  to  the  time  when 
my  father  kept  the  'Admiral  Benbow*  inn,  and  the 
brown  old  seaman,  with  the  sabre  cut,  first  took  up 
his  lodging  under  our  roof. 


166  STEVENSON 

"I  remember  him  as  if  it  were  yesterday,  as  he 
came  plodding  to  the  inn  door,  his  sea  chest  follow- 
ing behind  him  in  a  hand-barrow;  a  tall,  strong, 
heavy,  nut-brown  man ;  his  tarry  pigtail  falling  over 
the  shoulders  of  his  soiled  blue  coat;  his  hands 
ragged  and  scarred,  with  black,  broken  nails;  and 
the  sabre  cut  across  one  cheek,  a  dirty,  livid  white. 
I  remember  him  looking  round  the  cove  and  whis- 
tling to  himself  as  he  did  so,  and  then  breaking  out 
in  that  old  sea-song  that  he  sang  so  often  after- 
wards : — 

"  'Fifteen  men  on  the  dead  man's  chest — 
Yo-ho-ho,  and  a  bottle  of  rum!' 

in  the  high,  old  tottering  voice  that  seemed  to  have 
been  tuned  and  broken  at  the  capstan  bars.  Then 
he  rapped  on  the  door  with  a  bit  of  stick  like  a 
handspike  that  he  carried,  and  when  my  father  ap- 
peared, called  roughly  for  a  glass  of  rum.  This, 
when  it  was  brought  to  him,  he  drank  slowly,  like 
a  connoisseur,  lingering  on  the  taste,  and  still  look- 
ing about  him  at  the  cliffs  and  up  at  our  signboard. 

"  This  is  a  handy  cove/  says  he,  at  length ;  'and 
a  pleasant  sittyated  grog-shop.  Much  company, 
mate  ?' 

"My  father  told  hirn  no,  very  little  company,  the 
more  was  the  pity. 

"  'Well,  then,'  said  he,  'this  is  the  berth  for  me. 
Here,  you,  matey,'  he  cried  to  the  man  who  trundled 
the  barrow;  'bring  up  alongside  and  help  up  my 
chest.     I'll  stay  here  a  bit,'  he  continued.     'I'm  a 


THE    SPIRIT    OF   ROMANCE        167 

plain  man ;  rum  and  bacon  and  eggs  is  what  I  want, 
and  that  head  up  there  for  to  watch  ships  off.  What 
you  mought  call  me?  You  mought  call  me  captain. 
Oh,  I  see  what  you're  at — there;'  and  he  threw 
down  three  or  four  gold  pieces  on  the  threshold. 
'You  can  tell  me  when  I've  worked  through  that,' 
says  he,  looking  as  fierce  as  a  commander. 

"And,  indeed,  bad  as  his  clothes  were,  and  coarsely 
as  he  spoke,  he  had  none  of  the  appearance  of  a 
man  who  sailed  before  the  mast;  but  seemed  like  a 
mate  or  skipper,  accustomed  to  be  obeyed  or  to 
strike.  The  man  who  came  with  the  barrow  told 
us  the  mail  had  set  him  down  the  morning  before  at 
the  'Royal  George ;'  that  he  had  inquired  what  inns 
there  were  along  the  coast,  and  hearing  ours  well 
spoken  of,  I  suppose,  and  described  as  lonely,  had 
chosen  it  from  the  others  for  his  place  of  residence. 
And  that  was  all  we  could  learn  of  our  guest. 

"He  was  a  very  silent  man  by  custom.  All  day 
he  hung  round  the  cove,  or  upon  the  cliffs,  with  a 
brass  telescope;  all  evening  he  sat  in  a  corner  of 
the  parlour  next  the  fire,  and  drank  rum  and  water 
very  strong.  Mostly  he  would  not  speak  when 
spoken  to ;  only  look  up  sudden  and  fierce,  and  blow 
through  his  nose  like  a  fog-horn;  and  we  and  the 
people  who  came  about  our  house  soon  learned  to  let 
him  be.  Every  day,  when  he  came  back  from  his 
stroll,  he  would  ask  if  any  seafaring  men  had  gone 
by  along  the  road?  At  first  we  thought  it  was  the 
want  of  company  of  his  own  kind  that  made  him 
ask  this  question ;  but  at  last  we  began  to  see  he  was 


168  STEVENSON 

desirous  to  avoid  them.  When  a  seaman  put  up 
at  the  'Admiral  Benbow'  (as  now  and  then  some 
did,  making  by  the  coast  road  for  Bristol),  he  would 
look  in  at  him  through  the  curtained  door  before  he 
entered  the  parlour;  and  he  was  always  sure  to  be 
as  silent  as  a  mouse  when  any  such  was  present. 
For  me,  at  least,  there  was  no  secret  about  the  mat- 
ter ;  for  I  was,  in  a  way,  a  sharer  in  his  alarms.  He 
had  taken  me  aside  one  day,  and  promised  me  a 
silver  fourpenny  on  the  first  of  every  month  if  I 
would  only  keep  my  'weather-eye  open  for  a  sea- 
faring man  with  one  leg,'  and  let  him  know  the  mo- 
ment he  appeared.  Often  enough,  when  the  first 
of  the  month  came  round,  and  I  applied  to  him  for 
my  wage,  he  would  only  blow  through  his  nose  at 
me,  and  stare  me  down;  but  before  the  week  was 
out  he  was  sure  to  think  better  of  it,  bring  me  my 
fourpenny  piece,  and  repeat  his  orders  to  look  out 
for  'the  seafaring  man  with  one  leg.'     .     .     . 

"It  was  not  very  long  after  this  that  there  oc- 
curred the  first  of  the  mysterious  events  that  rid  us 
at  last  of  the  captain,  though  not,  as  you  will  see,  of 
his  affairs.  It  was  a  bitter  cold  winter,  with  long, 
hard  frosts  and  heavy  gales ;  and  it  was  plain  from 
the  first  that  my  poor  father  was  little  likely  to  see 
the  spring.  He  sank  daily,  and  my  mother  and  I 
had  all  the  inn  upon  our  hands ;  and  were  kept  busy 
enough,  without  paying  much  regard  to  our  un- 
pleasant guest. 

"It   was  one   January   morning,   very  early — a 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        169 

pinching,  frosty  morning — the  cove  all  grey  with 
hoar-frost,  the  ripple  lapping  softly  on  the  stones, 
the  sun  still  low  and  only  touching  the  hill-tops  and 
shining  far  to  seaward.  The  captain  had  risen 
earlier  than  usual,  and  set  out  down  the  beach,  his 
cutlass  swinging  under  the  broad  skirts  of  the  old 
blue  coat,  his  brass  telescope  under  his  arm,  his  hat 
tilted  back  upon  his  head.  I  remember  his  breath 
hanging  like  smoke  in  his  wake  as  he  strode 
off.     .     .     . 

"Well,  mother  was  up-stairs  with  father;  and  I 
was  laying  the  breakfast  table  against  the  captain's 
return,  when  the  parlour  door  opened,  and  a  man 
stepped  in  on  whom  I  had  never  set  my  eyes  before. 
He  was  a  pale,  tallowy  creature,  wanting  two  fingers 
of  the  left  hand;  and  though  he  wore  a  cutlass,  he 
did  not  look  much  like  a  fighter.  I  had  always  my 
eye  open  for  seafaring  men,  with  one  leg  or  two, 
and  I  remember  this  one  puzzled  me.  He  was 
not  sailorly,  and  yet  he  had  a  smack  of  the  sea  about 
him  too. 

"I  asked  him  what  was  for  his  service,  and  he 
said  he  would  take  rum;  but  as  I  was  going  out  of 
the  room  to  fetch  it  he  sat  down  upon  a  table  and 
motioned  me  to  draw  near.  I  paused  where  I  was 
with  my  napkin  in  my  hand. 

"  'Come  here,  sonny,'  says  he.  'Come  nearer 
here.'    I  took  a  step  nearer. 

"  'Is  this  here  table  for  my  mate  Bill  ?'  he  asked, 
with  a  kind  of  leer. 


170  STEVENSON 

"I  told  him  I  did  not  know  his  mate  Bill ;  and  this 
was  for  a  person  who  stayed  in  our  house,  whom 
we  called  the  captain. 

"  'Well/  said  he,  'my  mate  Bill  would  be  called 
the  captain,  as  like  as  not.  He  has  a  cut  on  one 
cheek,  and  a  mighty  pleasant  way  with  him,  par- 
ticularly in  drink,  has  my  mate  Bill.  We'll  put  it, 
for  argument  like,  that  your  captain  has  a  cut  on 
one  cheek — and  we'll  put  it,  if  you  like,  that  that 
cheek's  the  right  one.  Ah,  well !  I  told  you.  Now, 
is  my  mate  Bill  in  this  here  house  ?' 

"I  told  him  he  was  out  walking. 

"  'Which  way,  sonny  ?    Which  way  is  he  gone  ?' 

"And  when  I  had  pointed  out  the  rock  and  told 
him  how  the  captain  was  likely  to  return,  and  how 
soon,  and  answered  a  few  other  questions,  'Ah,' 
said  he,  'this'll  be  as  good  as  drink  to  my  mate  Bill.' 

"The  expression  of  his  face  as  he  said  these  words 
was  not  at  all  pleasant,  and  I  had  my  own  reasons 
for  thinking  that  the  stranger  was  mistaken,  even 
supposing  he  meant  what  he  said.  But  it  was  no 
affair  of  mine,  I  thought;  and,  besides,  it  was  diffi- 
cult to  know  what  to  do.  The  stranger  kept  hang- 
ing about  just  inside  the  inn  door,  peering  round 
the  corner  like  a  cat  waiting  for  a  mouse.  Once  I 
stepped  out  myself  into  the  road,  but  he  immediately 
called  me  back,  and,  as  I  did  not  obey  quick  enough 
for  his  fancy,  a  most  horrible  change  came  over  his 
tallowy  face,  and  he  ordered  me  in,  with  an  oath  that 
made  me  jump.  As  soon  as  I  was  back  again  he 
returned  to  his  former  manner,  half  fawning,  half 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        171 

sneering,  patted  me  on  the  shoulder,  told  me  I  was 
a  good  boy,  and  he  had  taken  quite  a  fancy  to  me. 
'I  have  a  son  of  my  own/  said  he,  'as  like  you  as 
two  blocks,  and  he's  all  the  pride  of  my  'art.  But 
the  great  thing  for  boys  is  discipline,  sonny — disci- 
pline. Now,  if  you  had  sailed  along  of  Bill,  you 
wouldn't  have  stood  there  to  be  spoke  to  twice — not 
you.  That  was  never  Bill's  way,  nor  the  way  of 
sich  as  sailed  with  him.  And  here,  sure  enough,  is 
my  mate  Bill,  with  a  spyglass  under  his  arm,  bless 
his  old  'art,  to  be  sure.  You  and  me' 11  just  go  back 
into  the  parlour,  sonny,  and  get  behind  the  door, 
and  we'll  give  Bill  a  little  surprise — bless  his  'art,  I 
say  again.' 

"So  saying,  the  stranger  backed  along  with  me 
into  the  parlour,  and  put  me  behind  him  in  the 
corner,  so  that  we  were  both  hidden  by  the  open 
door.  I  was  very  uneasy  and  alarmed,  as  you  may 
fancy,  and  it  rather  added  to  my  fears  to  observe 
that  the  stranger  was  certainly  frightened  himself. 
He  cleared  the  hilt  of  his  cutlass  and  loosened  the 
blade  in  the  sheath ;  and  all  the  time  we  were  waiting 
there  he  kept  swallowing  as  if  he  felt  what  we  used 
to  call  a  lump  in  the  throat. 

"At  last  in  strode  the  captain,  slammed  the  door 
behind  him,  without  looking  to  the  right  or  left, 
and  marched  straight  across  the  room  to  where  his 
breakfast  awaited  him. 

"  'Bill,'  said  the  stranger,  in  a  voice  that  I  thought 
he  had  tried  to  make  bold  and  big. 

"The  captain  spun  round  on  his  heel  and  fronted 


172  STEVENSON 

us ;  all  the  brown  had  gone  out  of  his  face,  and  even 
his  nose  was  blue;  he  had  the  look  of  a  man  who 
sees  a  ghost,  or  the  evil  one,  or  something  worse, 
if  anything  can  be;  and,  upon  my  word,  I  felt  sorry 
to  see  him,  all  in  a  moment,  turn  so  old  and  sick. 

"  'Come,  Bill,  you  know  me ;  you  know  an  old 
shipmate,  Bill,  surely/  said  the  stranger. 

"The  captain  made  a  sort  of  gasp. 

"'Black  Dog!'  said  he. 

"  'And  who  else  ?'  returned  the  other,  getting 
more  at  his  ease.  'Black  Dog  as  ever  was,  come  for 
to  see  his  old  shipmate  Billy,  at  the  "Admiral  Ben- 
bow,,  inn.  Ah,  Bill,  Bill,  we  have  seen  a  sight  of 
times,  us  two,  since  I  lost  them  two  talons,'  holding 
up  his  mutilated  hand. 

"  'Now  look  here/  said  the  captain ;  'you've  run 
me  down;  here  I  am;  well,  then,  speak  up:  what 
is  it?' 

"'That's  you/  returned  Black  Dog;  'you're  in 
the  right  of  it,  Billy.  I'll  have  a  glass  of  rum  from 
this  dear  child  here,  as  I've  took  such  a  liking  to; 
and  we'll  sit  down,  if  you  please,  and  talk  square, 
like  old  shipmates.' 

"When  I  returned  with  the  rum,  they  were  al- 
ready seated  on  either  side  of  the  captain's  break- 
fast table — Black  Dog  next  to  the  door,  and  sitting 
sideways,  so  as  to  have  one  eye  on  his  old  shipmate 
and  one,  as  I  thought,  on  his  retreat. 

"He  bade  me  go  and  leave  the  door  wide  open. 
'None  of  your  keyholes  for  me,  sonny/  he  said; 
and  I  left  them  together  and  retired  into  the  bar. 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        173 

"For  a  long  time,  though  I  certainly  did  my  best 
to  listen,  I  could  hear  nothing  but  a  low  gabbling. 
But  at  last  the  voices  began  to  grow  higher,  and  I 
could  pick  up  a  word  or  two,  mostly  oaths,  from  the 
captain. 

"  'No,  no,  no,  no ;  and  an  end  of  it !'  he  cried  once. 
And  again,  Tf  it  comes  to  swinging,  swing  all, 
say  I.' 

"Then  all  of  a  sudden  there  was  a  tremendous 
explosion  of  oaths  and  other  noises — the  chair  and 
the  table  went  over  in  a  lump,  a  clash  of  steel  fol- 
lowed, and  then  a  cry  of  pain,  and  the  next  instant 
I  saw  Black  Dog  in  full  flight,  and  the  captain  hotly 
pursuing,  both  with  drawn  cutlasses,  and  the  for- 
mer streaming  blood  from  the  left  shoulder.  Just 
at  the  door  the  captain  aimed  at  the  fugitive  one 
last  tremendous  cut,  which  would  certainly  have 
split  him  to  the  chine  had  it  not  been  intercepted  by 
our  big  signboard  of  Admiral  Benbow.  You  may  see 
the  notch  on  the  lower  side  of  the  frame  to  this  day. 

"That  blow  was  the  last  of  the  battle.  Once  out 
upon  the  road,  Black  Dog,  in  spite  of  his  wound, 
showed  a  wonderful  clean  pair  of  heels  and  disap- 
peared over  the  edge  of  the  hill  in  half  a  minute. 
The  captain,  for  his  part,  stood  staring  at  the  sign- 
board like  a  bewildered  man.  Then  he  passed  his 
hand  over  his  eyes  several  times,  and  at  last  turned 
back  into  the  house. 

"  'Jim,'  says  he,  'rum  ;■  and  as  he  spoke  he  reeled 
a  little  and  caught  himself  with  one  hand  against 
the  wall. 


174  STEVENSON 

"  'Are  you  hurt  ¥  cried  I. 

"  'Rum/  he  repeated.  'I  must  get  away  from 
here.     Rum!  rum!' 

"I  ran  to  fetch  it;  but  I  was  quite  unsteadied  by 
all  that  had  fallen  out,  and  I  broke  one  glass  and 
fouled  the  tap,  and  while  I  was  still  getting  in  my 
own  way  I  heard  a  loud  fall  in  the  parlour,  and, 
running  in,  beheld  the  captain  lying  full  length  upon 
the  floor.     .     .     . 

"A  great  deal  of  blood  was  taken  before  the  cap- 
tain opened  his  eyes  and  looked  mistily  about  him. 
First  he  recognized  the  doctor  with  an  unmistakable 
frown;  then  his  glance  fell  upon  me,  and  he  looked 
relieved.  But  suddenly  his  colour  changed,  and  he 
tried  to  raise  himself,  crying: — 

"'Where's  Black  Dog?' 

"  'There  is  no  Black  Dog  here/  said  the  doctor, 
'except  what  you  have  on  your  own  back.  You  have 
been  drinking  rum ;  you  have  had  a  stroke,  precisely 
as  I  told  you;  and  I  have  just,  very  much  against 
my  own  will,  dragged  you  headforemost  out  of  the 
grave.    Now,  Mr.  Bones — ' 

"  'That's  not  my  name,'  he  interrupted. 

"'Much  I  care,'  returned  the  doctor.  'It's  the 
name  of  a  buccaneer  of  my  acquaintance ;  and  I  call 
you  by  it  for  the  sake  of  shortness,  and  what  I  have 
to  say  to  you  is  this:  one  glass  of  rum  won't  kill 
you,  but  if  you  take  one  you'll  take  another  and  an- 
other, and  I  stake  my  wig  if  you  don't  break  off 
short  you'll  die — do  you  understand  that  ? — die,  and 
go  to  your  own  place,  like  the  man  in  the  Bible. 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        175 

Come,  now,  make  an  effort.  I'll  help  you  to  your 
bed  for  once.' 

"Between  us,  with  much  trouble,  we  managed  to 
hoist  him  up-stairs,  and  laid  him  on  his  bed,  where 
his  head  fell  back  on  the  pillow,  as  if  he  were  almost 
fainting. 

"  'Now,  mind  you,'  said  the  doctor,  'I  clear  my 
conscience — the  name  of  rum  for  you  is  death.' 

"And  with  that  he  went  off  to  see  my  father, 
taking  me  with  him  by  the  arm. 

"  This  is  nothing,'  he  said,  as  soon  as  he  had 
closed  the  door.  'I  have  drawn  blood  enough  to 
keep  him  quiet  awhile;  he  should  lie  for  a  week 
where  he  is — that  is  the  best  thing  for  him  and  you ; 
but  another  stroke  would  settle  him.' 

"About  noon  I  stopped  at  the  captain's  door  with 
some  cooling  drinks  and  medicines.  He  was  lying 
very  much  as  we  had  left  him,  only  a  little  higher, 
and  he  seemed  both  weak  and  excited.    .    .    . 

"  'Jim/  he  said,  at  length,  'you  saw  that  seafaring 
man  to-day?' 

"  'Black  Dog?'  I  asked. 

"  'Ah!  Black  Dog/  says  he.  'He's  a  bad  un;  but 
there's  worse  that  put  him  on.  Now,  if  I  can't 
get  away  nohow,  and  they  tip  me  the  black  spot, 
mind  you,  it's  my  old  sea-chest  they're  after;  you 
get  on  a  horse — you  can,  can't  you  ?  Well,  then,  you 
get  on  a  horse,  and  go  to — well,  yes,  I  will ! — to  that 
eternal  Doctor  swab,  and  tell  him  to  pipe  all  hands 
— magistrates  and  sich — and  he'll  lay  'em  aboard  at 
the  "Admiral  Benbow" — all  old  Flint's  crew,  man 


176  STEVENSON 

and  boy,  all  on  'em  that's  left.  I  was  first  mate,  I 
was,  old  Flint's  first  mate,  and  I'm  the  on'y  one  as 
knows  the  place.  He  gave  it  me  at  Savannah,  when 
he  lay  a-dying,  like  as  if  I  was  to  now,  you  see. 
But  you  won't  peach  unless  they  get  the  black  spot 
on  me,  or  unless  you  see  that  Black  Dog  again,  or 
a  seafaring  man  with  one  leg,  Jim — him  above  all.' 

"  'But  what  is  the  black  spot,  captain  ?'  I  asked. 

"  That's  a  summons,  mate.  I'll  tell  you  if  they 
get  that.  But  you  keep  your  weather-eye  open,  Jim, 
and  I'll  share  with  you  equals,  upon  my  honour.'  " 


IV 


The  genius  of  sheer  fiction  is  in  these  first  pages. 
No  other  story  of  buried  treasure  will  ever  have 
such  a  start  as  this.  The  way  in  which  the  original 
crew  of  cut-throats  is  unwittingly  reassembled  by 
Squire  Trelawny  and  their  acceptance  forced  on 
Doctor  Livesy  and  the  captain,  in  spite  of  protest, 
is  all  the  most  fascinating  invention.  Whimsicality 
in  no  way  robs  the  reader  of  excitement.  And  it 
seems  to  me  that  Stevenson's  special  gift  lay  in  the 
combination  of  thrilling  romance  and  wonderful 
nonsense.  "No  born  fools  would  have  started  with 
such  a  crew  as  that,"  you  may  say.  "And  the  sea- 
manship !  let  alone  Jim  Hawkins,  a  mere  boy,  tack- 
ing an  old-fashioned  two-hundred-ton  schooner 
about  the  island  all  by  himself!"  The  answer  to 
such  questions  is  not  the  answer  of  reason.  But, 
for  my  own  part,  I  used  to  do  the  very  thing  when 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        177 

I  was  ten  years  old  and  still  completely  landlocked 
by  the  Berkshire  Hills.  I  have  done  it  recently  sev- 
eral times  with  Jim  Hawkins,  and  I  shall  never  be- 
lieve that  a  fact  in  romance  isn't  as  much  a  fact  as 
in  actuality  and  a  sight  more  real  at  the  same  time, 
if  a  man  like  R.  L.  S.  says  so.  As  for  seamanship, 
I  am  sure  there  is  no  officer  in  the  navy  who  would 
not  sail  under  Captain  Smollet  any  day  in  the  year 
and  never  offer  to  mend  his  vocabulary  one  jot  or 
tittle.  You  may  prefer  The  Bluejacket's  Manual, 
and  carry  it  in  your  hip-pocket  to  guard  against  mis- 
takes, but  I  prefer  to  pull  the  wrong  tackle  now  and 
then  with  Stevenson,  who  himself,  it  is  true,  barely 
knew  one  rope's  end  from  another.  And  if  one 
were  to  drown,  after  the  manner  of  Shelley,  with 
the  sheets  belayed,  how  much  finer,  and  how  far  less 
ironical,  to  have  them  discover  afterward  that  one 
had  been  navigating  by  Treasure  Island  instead  of 
by  the  Manual, 

It  was  certainly  with  pardonable  condescension 
that  Stevenson  remarked  in  a  letter  to  Henley,  when 
the  tale  had  appeared  in  book  form,  that  he  knew 
very  well  his  seamanship  was  "jimmy,"  but  that  if 
his  characters  were  fairly  lively  on  the  wires  he 
wanted  applause — for  the  work,  he  added,  "is  not 
a  work  of  realism." 

Romance  does  not  depend  for  its  power  on  fidel- 
ity to  externals,  but  rather,  like  poetry,  on  the  tone 
and  on  the  rhythm  of  fancy.  Later,  when  Steven- 
son knew  infinitely  more  about  the  sea  and  ships 
and  islands  than  he  did  in  his  first  story;  when  he 


178  STEVENSON 

had  himself  lived  through  a  voyage  of  strange  ad- 
venture somewhere  off  the  edge  of  the  chart,  S.  S. 
W.  out  of  San  Francisco,  could  he  write  romance 
any  more  truly?  He  could  be  infinitely  more  faith- 
ful to  detail.  But  you  may  go  to  sleep  in  the 
vaunted  "realism"  of  The  Wrecker,1  and  though 
The  Ebb  Tide  is  gruesome  enough  to  keep  one 
awake,  a  nap  being  hardly  possible  with  that  little 
cockney  Huish  lurking  about,  is  it  the  pretty  piece 
of  navigation  that  charms  you,  or  something  else? 
No,  Stevenson  never  wrote  another  tale  of  the  sea 
to  compare  with  your  first  reading  of  Treasure 
Island.  One  must  not  hope  to  make  such  a  voyage 
twice,  except  in  memory. 

Therefore,  if  you  ask  where  else  in  Stevenson 
can  be  found  anything  nearly  like  this,  as  boyish 
and  as  eternally  captivating,  I  believe  I  should  rec- 
ommend you,  first  of  all,  to  read  the  book  straight 
over.  It  will  stand  it — a  rare  thing  for  a  mere  ro- 
mance. It  is  there  you  will  .find  afresh  what  you 
are  looking  for.  Then  I  should  suggest  that  story 
of  "The  Sire  de  Malctroit's  Door"  at  the  end  of 
the  volume  of  New  Arabian  Nights;  and  I  should  be 
inclined  to  add  that  in  no  other  spot  in  all  Stevenson 
will  you  so  nearly  find  the  acme  of  adventure  as  you 
do  in  those  twenty  pages.  That  is  also  one  of  the 
classics.  There  are,  to  be  sure,  the  opening  chapters 
of  "The  Pavilion  on  the  Links,"  and  things  just  as 
good  of  a  different  sort  in  other  of  his  short  stories 

1  See  the  Epilogue  to  Will  Low  at  the  end  of  The  Wrecker. 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        179 

of  which  we  shall  speak  later.  But  in  Stevenson's 
longer  romances  you  might  look  far  and  in  vain, 
especially  in  those  books  planned  primarily  for  boys. 


Certainly  you  won't  find  it  in  The  Black  Arrow, 
a  yarn  written  very  rapidly  the  year  after  Treasure 
Island  at  Hyeres  and  Royat.  Compared  to  Treas- 
ure Island,  it  is  much  like  dreaming  to  order.  In 
the  first  place,  there  is  inserted,  ready-made,  almost 
every  possible  element  of  boy-and-girl  melodrama, 
and  of  course  a  great  deal  of  it  is  as  good  as  such 
things  can  be.  The  very  idea  of  the  mysterious 
arrows  which  arrive  one  by  one  fascinates  the  imag- 
ination. The  third  of  them,  I  think  it  is,  crashes 
through  the  high,  stained-glass  window,  when  Dick 
and  Sir  Daniel  are  talking  in  the  chapel,  and  sticks 
quivering  into  the  long  table.  That  is  a  pretty  good 
place,  and  the  human  eye  in  the  tapestry  of  the 
Savage  Hunter  is  a  devilish  good  bit  of  old  ma- 
chinery. But  the  trouble  is  that  here  the  whole  prin- 
ciple of  fitness  is  overdone,  is  carried  out  almost  as 
completely  as  in  the  stories  of  Hay  ward  and  Skelt. 
When  the  castle  is  attacked  from  the  sea  there  is, 
in  the  first  place,  a  thick  black  night  made  extra 
thick  and  black  by  a  driving  snow-storm  and  extra 
confusing  and  boisterous  by  the  wine  which  the 
ruffians  get  up  from  the  hold  of  the  ship.  The  castle 
has  a  secret  passage,  a  trap  door,  a  haunted  room, 
a  dark  moat  to  swim — everything  that  the  word 


180  STEVENSON 

castle  stands  for  in  the  medieval  mind  of  a  small 
boy.  At  the  end,  the  villainous  bridegroom  is  shot 
at  the  altar,  and  the  hero  inherits.  I  have  not 
counted  the  number  of  people  who  are  killed  in  The 
Black  Arrow,  but  there  must  be  one  for  every  page. 
Therefore  you  will  conclude  properly  that  it  is  not 
at  all  a  bad  tale  for  children,  or  for  anybody  whose 
historical  fancy  is  easily  roused  and  for  whom 
phrases  like  "methinks,"  "alack,"  "varlet  with  a 
link,"  "nay,  I  am  shrewedly  afeard,  Sir  Parson,  but 
this  runs  hard  on  sacrilege,"  are  the  essence  of  local 
color.    But  you  will  not  care  to  read  it  yourself. 

I  think  you  will  also  look  in  vain  through  St. 
Ives,  a  long  and  spirited  yarn  which  Stevenson  had 
not  quite  brought  to  an  end  when  he  died.  St.  Ives 
is  a  serious  matter ;  far  more  serious  than  Treasure 
Island,  because  it  is  first  of  all  a  character  study, 
and  a  boy's  story  of  plot  but  incidentally.  In  it 
Stevenson  has  expended  a  vast  amount  of  art,  and, 
one  might  add,  of  artificiality.  St.  Ives,  an  irrepres- 
sible young  Frenchman,  beyond  doubt  the  most  flu- 
ent lad  in  Europe,  intrudes  his  high  spirits  into 
every  corner  of  the  endless  adventure,  and  in  the 
end  strikes  you  as  made  of  nothing  so  much  as  of 
words.  He  is  a  most  consistent  character — most 
wonderfully  sustained  —  a  veritable  impersonation 
of  the  maxim,  "le  style  ccst  llxomme."  But  thus, 
though  the  whole  thing  is  a  breathless  tale  of  the 
road,  of  inns,  of  escape  and  pursuit,  with  a  lot 
about  love,  in  the  days  just  before  Waterloo,  you 
will  not  find  that  charm  of  incident  which  you  may 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        181 

be  looking  for.  The  point  of  the  story  is  merely  to 
talk — and  I  can  not  help  remarking  that  it  was  writ- 
ten entirely  by  dictation.  It  is  told  with  a  sort  of 
flurry  that  overwhelms  rather  than  stimulates.  Ste- 
venson knew  his  Dumas ;  but  Dumas  never  wore  us 
out  with  the  activity  of  his  vocabulary  or  confused 
us  with  a  medley  of  language.  In  Dumas  there  was 
always  some  purpose  in  sight,  something  to  settle 
down  to.  In  St.  Ives,  and  in  too  many  of  Steven- 
son's other  books,  the  improbability  of  any  signifi- 
cant end  or  purpose  robs  the  reader  of  considerable 
satisfaction  by  the  way.  He  ceases  to  guess  at  what 
the  turns  of  the  plot  may  point  to,  for  it  grows 
steadily  more  and  more  obvious  that  a  whimsical 
purposelessness,  a  day  to  day  foresight,  usurps  the 
place  of  thoroughness  of  imagination. 

Better  than  St.  Ives  is  The  Wrecker,  a  delightful, 
nonsensical  medley,  which  has  in  the  midst  of  itself 
a  mystery  of  the  ocean  that  for  a  few  chapters  will 
vie  with  your  memory  of  Treasure  Island.  It  is, 
however,  quite  a  different  sort  of  mystery.  The 
germs  of  the  tale  Lloyd  Osbourne  and  Stevenson 
discovered  at  Honolulu,  in  1889,  from  a  ship- 
wrecked crew  who  had  just  arrived  in  the  harbor 
under  most  peculiar  circumstances.  The  two  authors 
proceeded  to  develop  the  matter  during  their  subse- 
quent cruise  to  Samoa.  So  the  story  was  written 
in  the  very  atmosphere  and  on  the  very  waters  of 
romance  which  it  describes.  But  some  of  the  ro- 
mance gives  way  to  realism,  and  much  of  the  charm 
to  a  spooky,  detective  sort  of  plot  which  I  believe 


182  STEVENSON 

the  authors  thought  would  make  a  hit  with  the 
American  public.  You  will  find,  nevertheless,  in 
Chapter  XIV,  entitled  "The  Cabin  of  the  Flying 
Scud,"  if  you  read  every  word  of  the  previous  med- 
ley of  two  hundred  seventy-eight  pages  and  under- 
stand all  its  intricacies,  a  bit  of  excitement  not  to 
be  missed.  At  least  you  will  be  as  neatly  puzzled 
for  a  time  as  you  ever  have  been  between  the  covers 
of  a  book.    But  you  will  not  be  charmed. 


VI 


It  is  only  in  Kidnapped,  a  tale  of  1745  in  Scot- 
land, that  Stevenson  has  given  us  many  pages  that 
definitely  compare  with  Treasure  Island.  Kid- 
napped was  Stevenson's  favorite  among  all  his 
books;  and  I  have  known  a  few  people  who  agree 
with  this  judgment,  though  it  is  notorious  that  an 
author  always  prefers  his  second  best  to  his  best — 
on  the  ground,  I  suppose,  of  sympathy  with  the 
under-dog.  Kidnapped,  divorced  from  its  senti- 
mental sequel,  Catriona,  is  certainly  a  very  fair 
second.  It  was  written  in  1886,  five  years  after 
Treasure  Island.  (Catriona,  or  David  Balfour,  as 
the  book  was  entitled  in  America,  belongs  to  the  St. 
Ives  period,  much  later.)  The  true  spirit  of  adven- 
ture descends  upon  the  hero,  David,  and  under 
the  guidance  of  Alan  Breck  he  moves  spellbound 
through  all  the  wonderful  antics  of  the  action. 
David  is  of  course  R.  L.  S.,  and  also  there  is 
much  of  R.   L.    S.   in   Alan  Breck,   with  his   ro- 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        183 

mantic  philosophy,  his  exhibition  of  all  the  ges- 
tures of  bravado,  and  the  flashing  brand  of  his 
glorified  egotism.  Hence  these  two,  so  intimately 
idealized,  are  very  real  people  to  the  fancy.  If  you 
care  for  Jim  Hawkins,  searching  Billy  Bones's 
sea-chest,  or  hiding  under  the  bridge  in  the  foggy 
night,  or  hiding  again  in  an  apple  barrel,  you  will 
care  for  David  on  the  old  staircase  in  the  House 
of  Shaws,  and  for  David  and  Alan  in  the  deckhouse 
of  the  Covenant,  on  the  rock  in  Glencoe  stream, 
and  in  their  long  flight  through  the  heather.  The 
pieces  are  all  of  the  same  fabric.  You  may  open 
the  book  very  much  where  you  will.  The  nature  of 
it  is  like  this : 

"For  all  our  hurry,  day  began  to  come  in  while 
we  were  still  far  from  any  shelter.  It  found  us  in 
a  prodigious  valley,  strewn  with  rocks  and  where 
ran  a  foaming  river.  Wild  mountains  stood  around 
it;  there  grew  there  neither  grass  nor  trees;  and  I 
have  sometimes  thought  since  then  that  it  may  have 
been  the  valley  called  Glencoe,  where  the  massacre 
was  in  the  time  of  King  William.  But  for  the  de- 
tails of  our  itinerary,  I  am  all  to  seek;  our  way 
lying  now  by  short  cuts,  now  by  great  detours ;  our 
pace  being  so  hurried;  our  time  of  journeying  usu- 
ally by  night;  and  the  names  of  such  places  as  I 
asked  and  heard  being  in  the  Gaelic  tongue  and  the 
more  easily  forgotten. 

"The  first  peep  of  morning,  then,  showed  us  this 
horrible  place,  and  I  could  see  Alan  knit  his  brow. 


184  STEVENSON 

"  'This  is  no  fit  place  for  you  and  me,'  he  said. 
'This  is  a  place  they're  bound  to  watch.' 

"And  with  that  he  ran  harder  than  ever  down  to 
the  water-side  in  a  part  where  the  river  was  split 
in  two  among  three  rocks.  It  went  through  with 
a  horrid  thundering  that  made  my  belly  quake ;  and 
there  hung  over  the  lynn  a  mist  of  spray.  Alan 
looked  neither  to  the  right  nor  to  the  left,  but 
jumped  clean  upon  the  middle  rock  and  fell  there 
on  his  hands  and  knees  to  check  himself,  for  that 
rock  was  small  and  he  might  have  pitched  over  on 
the  far  side.  I  had  scarce  time  to  measure  the  dis- 
tance or  to  understand  the  peril  before  I  had  fol- 
lowed him,  and  he  had  caught  and  stopped  me. 

"So  there  we  stood,  side  by  side  upon  a  small  rock 
slippery  with  spray,  a  far  broader  leap  in  front  of 
us,  and  the  river  dinning  upon  all  sides.  When  I 
saw  where  I  was  there  came  on  me  a  deadly  sick- 
ness of  fear,  and  I  put  my  hand  over  my  eyes. 
Alan  took  me  and  shook  me ;  I  saw  he  was  speaking, 
but  the  roaring  of  the  falls  and  the  trouble  of  my 
mind  prevented  me  from  hearing;  only  I  saw  his 
face  was  red  with  anger,  and  that  he  stamped  upon 
the  rock.  The  same  look  showed  me  the  water  rag- 
ing by  and  the  mist  hanging  in  the  air;  and  with 
that  I  covered  my  eyes  again  and  shuddered. 

"The  next  minute  Alan  had  set  the  brandy  bottle 
to  my  lips,  and  forced  me  to  drink  about  a  gill, 
which  sent  the  blood  into  my  head  again.  Then, 
putting  his  hands  to  his  mouth  and  his  mouth  to 
my  ear  he  shouted,  'Hang  or  Drown!'  and  turning 


THE    SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        185 

his  back  upon  me  leaped  over  the  farther  branch  of 
the  stream  and  landed  safe. 

"I  was  now  alone  upon  the  rock,  which  gave  me 
the  more  room ;  the  brandy  was  singing  in  my  ears ; 
I  had  this  good  example  fresh  before  me,  and  just 
wit  enough  to  see  that  if  I  did  not  leap  at  once  I 
should  never  leap  at  all.  I  bent  low  on  my  knees 
and  flung  myself  forth,  with  that  kind  of  anger  of 
despair  that  has  sometimes  stood  me  in  stead  of 
courage.  Sure  enough,  it  was  but  my  hands  that 
reached  the  full  length ;  these  slipped,  caught  again, 
slipped  again;  and  I  was  sliddering  back  into  the 
lynn,  when  Alan  Seized  me,  first  by  the  hair,  then 
by  the  collar  and  with  a  great  strain  dragged  me 
into  safety. 

"Never  a  word  he  said,  but  set  off  running  again 
for  his  life,  and  I  must  stagger  to  my  feet  and  run 
after  him.  I  had  been  weary  before,  but  now  I 
was  sick  and  bruised,  and  partly  drunken  with  the 
brandy;  I  kept  stumbling  as  I  ran,  I  had  a  stitch 
that  came  near  to  overmaster  me ;  and  when  at  last 
Alan  paused  under  a  great  rock  that  stood  there 
among  a  number  of  others,  it  was  none  too  soon  for 
David  Balfour. 

"A  great  rock,  I  have  said;  but  by  rights  it  was 
two  rocks  leaning  together  at  the  top,  both  some 
twenty  feet  high,  and  at  the  first  sight  inaccessible. 
Even  Alan  (though  you  may  say  he  had  as  good  as 
four  hands)  failed  twice  in  an  attempt  to  climb 
them;  and  it  was  only  at  the  third  trial,  and  then 
by  standing  on  my  shoulders  and  leaping  up  with 


186  STEVENSON 

such  force  as  I  thought  must  have  broken  my  col- 
lar-bone, that  he  secured  a  lodgment.  Once  there, 
he  let  down  his  leathern  girdle;  and  with  the  aid  of 
that  and  a  pair  of  shallow  footholds  in  the  rock 
I  scrambled  up  beside  him. 

"Then  I  saw  why  we  had  come  there;  for  the 
two  rocks,  both  being  somewhat  hollow  on  the  top 
and  sloping  one  to  the  other,  made  a  kind  of  dish 
or  saucer,  where  as  many  as  three  or  four  men  might 
have  lain  hidden. 

"All  this  while  Alan  had  not  said  a  word,  and 
had  run  and  climbed  with  such  a  savage,  silent 
frenzy  of  hurry,  that  I  knew  he  was  in  mortal  fear 
of  some  miscarriage.  Even  now  we  were  on  the 
rock  he  said  nothing,  nor  so  much  as  relaxed  the 
frowning  look  upon  his  face ;  but  clapped  flat  down, 
and  keeping  only  one  eye  above  the  edge  of  our 
place  of  shelter  scouted  all  round  the  compass.  The 
dawn  had  come  quite  clear;  we  could  see  the  stony 
sides  of  the  valley,  and  its  bottom,  which  was  be- 
strewed with  rocks,  and  the  river,  which  went  from 
one  side  to  another,  and  made  white  falls;  but  no- 
where the  smoke  of  a  house,  nor  any  living  creature 
but  some  eagles  screaming  round  a  cliff. 

"Then  at  last  Alan  smiled. 

"  'Ay,'  said  he,  'now  we  have  a  chance ;'  and  then 
looking  at  me  with  some  amusement,  'Ye're  no  very 
gleg  at  the  jumping/  said  he. 

"At  this  I  suppose  I  coloured  with  mortification, 
for  he  added  at  once,  'Hoots !  small  blame  to  ye !  To 


THE   SPIRIT   OF   ROMANCE        187 

be  feared  of  a  tiring  and  yet  to  do  it,  is  what  makes 
the  prettiest  kind  of  a  man.  And  then  there  was 
water  there,  and  water's  a  thing  that  dauntons  even 
file.  No,  no/  said  Alan,  'it's  no  you  that's  to  blame, 
it's  me." 

"I  asked  him  why. 

"  Why/  said  he,  'I  have  proved  myself  a  gomeral 
this  night  For  the  first  of  all  I  take  a  wrong  road, 
and  that  in  my  own  country  of  Appin ;  so  that  the 
day  has  caught  us  where  we  should  never  have  been ; 
and  thanks  to  that,  we  lie  here  in  some  danger  and 
mair  discomfort  And  next  (which  is  the  worst  of 
the  two,  for  a  man  that  has  been  so  much  among 
the  heather  as  myself)  I  have  come  wanting  a  water- 
bottie,  and  here  we  lie  for  a  long  summer's  day  with 
naething  but  neat  spirit.  Ye  may  think  that  a  small 
matter;  but  before  it  comes  night,  David,  ye'll  give 
me  news  of  it/ 

"I  was  anxious  to  redeem  my  character,  and  of- 
fered, if  he  would  pour  out  the  brandy,  to  run 
down  and  fill  the  bottle  at  the  river. 

"  'I  wouldnae  waste  the  good  spirit  either/  says 
he.  'It's  been  a  good  friend  to  you  this  night,  or 
in  my  poor  opinion,  ye  would  still  be  cocking  on 
yon  stone.  And  what's  mair,'  says  he,  'ye  may  have 
observed  (you  that's  a  man  of  so  much  penetra- 
tion) that  Alan  Breck  Stewart  was  perhaps  walk- 
ing quicker  than  his  ordinar'/ 

"  'You !'  I  cried,  'you  were  running  fit  to  burst.' 

'"Was  I  so?'  said  he.    'Well,  then,  ye  may  de- 


188  STEVENSON 

pend  upon  it,  there  was  nae  time  to  be  lost.  And 
now  were  is  enough  said;  gang  you  to  your  sleep, 
lad,  and  I'll  watch/ 

"Accordingly  I  lay  down  to  sleep;  a  little  peaty 
earth  had  drifted  in  between  the  top  of  the  two 
rocks,  and  some  bracken  grew  there,  to  be  a  bed 
to  me;  the  last  thing  I  heard  was  the  crying  of  the 
eagles. 

"I  daresay  it  would  be  nine  in  the  morning  when 
I  was  roughly  awakened,  and  found  Alan's  hand 
pressed  upon  my  mouth. 

"  'Wheesht !'  he  whispered.    'Ye  were  snoring/ 

"  'Well/  said  I,  surprised  at  his  anxious  and 
dark  face,  'and  why  not?' 

"He  peered  over  the  edge  of  the  rock,  and  signed 
to  me  to  do  the  like. 

"It  was  now  high  day,  cloudless,  and  very  hot. 
The  valley  was  as  clear  as  in  a  picture.  About  half- 
a-mile  up  the  water  was  a  camp  of  redcoats;  a  big 
fire  blazed  in  their  midst,  at  which  some  were  cook- 
ing; and  near  by,  on  the  top  of  a  rock  about  as  high 
as  ours,  there  stood  a  sentry,  with  the  sun  sparkling 
on  his  arms.  All  the  way  down  along  the  riverside 
were  posted  other  sentries ;  here  near  together,  there 
widelier  scattered;  some  planted  like  the  first  on 
places  of  command,  some  on  the  ground  level,  and 
marching  and  countermarching,  so  as  to  meet  half 
way.  Higher  up  the  glen,  where  the  ground  was 
more  open,  the  chain  of  posts  was  continued  by 
horse-soldiers,  whom  we  could  see  in  the  distance 
riding  to  and  fro.    Lower  down  the  infantry  con- 


THE   SPIRIT    OF    ROMANCE        189 

tinued;  but  as  the  stream  was  suddenly  swelled  by 
the  confluence  of  a  considerable  burn,  they  were 
more  widely  set,  and  only  watched  the  fords  and 
stepping-stones. 

"I  took  but  one  look  at  them  and  ducked  again 
into  my  place.  It  was  strange  indeed  to  see  this 
valley,  which  had  lain  so  solitary  in  the  hour  of 
dawn,  bristling  with  arms  and  dotted  with  the  red- 
coats and  breeches. 

"  'Ye  see,'  said  Alan,  'this  was  what  I  was  afraid 
of  Davie:  that  they  would  watch  the  burnside. 
They  began  to  come  in  about  two  hours  ago,  and, 
man!  but  ye're  a  grand  hand  at  sleeping!  We're 
in  a  narrow  place.  If  they  get  up  the  sides  of  the 
hill  they  could  easily  spy  us  with  a  glass;  but  if 
they'll  only  keep  in  the  foot  of  the  valley,  we'll  do 
yet.  The  posts  are  thinner  down  the  water;  and 
come  night  we'll  try  our  hand  at  getting  by  them.' 

"  'And  what  are  we  to  do  till  night  ?'  I  asked. 

"  'Lie  here/  says  he  'and  birstle.'  " — Kidnapped. 

There  is  a  zest  for  adventure  in  this  story  and  in 
Treasure  Island  which  perhaps  only  D'Artagnan 
surpasses.  Certainly  there  are  few  others  which 
for  this  come  up  to  it.  Amyas  Leigh  in  Charles 
Kingsley's  romance,  John  Ridd,  in  Lorna  Doone, 
are  not  far  behind,  and  in  other  respects  may  have 
delights  for  the  reader  which  David  and  Alan  and 
Jim  Hawkins  can  not  offer.  But  these  are  the  im- 
mortals in  England. 


CHAPTER  X 

ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  AND  FARCE 

I 

^TREASURE  ISLAND  and  Kidnapped  are  clas- 
-*  sics  of  their  kind,  not  great  romances,  certainly, 
to  vie  with  Dumas  in  scope,  but  tales  that  take  one 
over  the  borders  of  real  life  as  wholly  for  the  time 
as  any  of  them.  They  will  always  be  for  us  part  of 
the  Great  Illusion. 

Treasure  Island  was  Stevenson's  promise  of  a 
greater  romance ;  and  surely  it  would  seem  that  the 
inventor  of  this  day-dream  could  have  sustained 
other  and  wider  visions.  But  the  promise  was  never 
fulfilled,  and  the  truth  is  that  Stevenson's  habit  of 
work  rather  precluded  it.  His  fine  work  was  to  be 
done,  as  it  already  had  been,  in  the  romantic  fable 
and  essay — not  in  anything  much  over  a  hundred 
pages  long.  "Will  o'  the  Mill"  is  perhaps  the  best 
thing  before  Treasure  Island;  Dr.  Jekyll,  "Mark- 
heim,"  "The  Treasure  of  Franchard,"  "The  Isle  of 
Voices,"  are  among  the  best  things  that  follow. 
They  are  not  his  long  romances,  only  one  or  two  of 
which  he  knew  how  to  bring  to  a  real  conclusion. 

190 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE     191 

Stevenson  never  had  enough  continuous  energy 
to  learn  the  craft  of  sustained  fiction  as  Dumas 
learned  it.  The  delightful,  characteristic  story  of 
how  Treasure  Island  was  composed  has  its  moral. 
The  map  of  the  island  was  drawn  first — before  there 
was  idea  of  anything  more  than  a  yarn  to  amuse 
Lloyd  Osboume  with ;  then  Stevenson's  father  made 
a  list  of  all  the  articles  in  Billy  Bones's  sea-chest; 
and  Stevenson,  finding  two  interested  auditors, 
wrote  a  chapter  each  day  for  fifteen  days  to  read 
aloud  to  them,  after  which  not  another  incident 
could  be  for  some  time  imagined.  This  was  at  Brse- 
nar,  in  the  summer  of  1881,  and  Gosse  and  Colvin, 
visiting  him  there,  so  much  encouraged  him  to  con- 
tinue that  he  finally  succeeded  in  carrying  it  on ;  but 
Mrs.  Stevenson  says  that  had  the  tale  not  shortly 
begun  to  appear  as  a  serial  in  Young  Folks  it  would 
probably  never  have  been  concluded. 

One  of  Stevenson's  faults,  the  fault  of  random 
progress  of  which  there  is  so  much  evidence  in  his 
longer  works,  is  due  partly  to  the  exaggerated  im- 
portance which  romance  as  a  method  had  for  him 
in  art.  There  is  something  delightfully  humorous 
and  gay  about  his  habit  of  reading  aloud  to  a  breath- 
less audience  the  first  chapters  of  a  marvelous  tale 
that  leads  in  a  day  or  two  into  a  nearly  inextri- 
cable cul-de-sac,  out  of  which,  if  he  is  to  come  at 
all,  it  is  only  by  means  of  the  pick  and  shovel.  It 
was  undoubtedly  more  fun  to  keep  up  his  spirits 
with  beginnings  and  plans,  when  his  troubles  made 
him  incapable  of  any  prolonged  labor,  than  to  guard 


192  STEVENSON 

his  energy  for  the  real  work  in  hand.  He  usually 
kept  three  or  four  stories  going  at  once  and  was 
forever  making  wonderful  lists  of  a  dozen  others 
that  he  expected  to  attack  in  a  week  or  so.  It 
exhilarated  him  beyond  measure  to  write  up  his 
first  conception  of  a  plot;  and  his  audience  always 
caught  the  contagion.  "No  finished  story,"  says 
one  of  his  friends,  "was,  or  ever  will  be,  so  good 
as  Weir  of  Her  mist  on  shone  to  us  in  those  days  by 
the  light  of  its  author's  first  ardour  of  creation." 
And  Gosse,  who  was  one  of  the  fortunate  people  to 
hear  Treasure  Island  thus  read  aloud,  says,  "I  look 
back  to  no  keener  intellectual  pleasure  than  those 
cold  nights  at  Braemar,  with  the  sleet  howling  out- 
side, and  Louis  reading  his  budding  romance  by  the 
lamplight,  emphasizing  the  purpler  passages  with 
lifted  voice  and  gesticulating  finger."  Stevenson 
seems  to  have  needed  the  excitement,  human  sym- 
pathy and  applause  of  an  audience.  This  is  a  socia- 
ble trait.  But  I  imagine  that  if  their  interest  flagged 
he  began  to  work  at  something  else.  I  think  that 
as  the  plot  of  these  splendid  beginnings  was  dis- 
covered not  to  be  a  plot,  only  a  situation  with  one 
or  two  obviously  contingent  situations,  the  author's 
enthusiasm  fell,  the  construction  of  the  story  became 
mechanical,  and  the  movement  came  to  depend  al- 
most entirely  on  keeping  up  a  certain  line  of  talk,  a 
certain  attitudinizing,  among  the  characters.  Ro- 
mance, as  a  method  of  craftsmanship,  is  not  often 
successful.  An  author  can  hardly  hope  to  do  for 
himself,  as  he  writes,  what  he  tries  to  do  for  the 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE     193 

reader,  as  that  gentleman  reads.    But  Stevenson  was 
always  attempting  it. 

In  his  own  life  and  in  his  philosophy,  Stevenson 
carried  out  the  trick  with  eclat,  or  at  least  trammeled 
up  the  disillusionment.  But  in  romantic  fiction,  just 
as  in  realistic  fiction,  the  magician  must  have  his 
stand  outside  the  spell  he  creates.  He  must  always 
be  in  control.  He  must  be  able  to  see  it  all  com- 
plete. In  other  words,  the  final  method,  even  of  the 
dreamer,  is  not  to  be  dreaming,  but  to  have  dreamed. 
In  spite  of  the  fact  that  one  could  not  possibly  make 
a  romance  by  the  stark  impersonal  methods  of  real- 
ism, this  general  principle  still  holds  true.  It  is  a 
principle  that  Stevenson  in  nearly  all  his  shorter 
things  understands,  and  then,  curiously  enough,  in 
nearly  all  his  longer  stories  forgets.  He  tells  as 
he  goes,  dreams  away  boldly  in  plain  view,  and 
therefore  can  say  no  more  than  the  reader  what  is 
coming  next.  Before  he  knows  it  the  spell  has 
vanished.  From  the  point  of  view  of  artistic  unity 
there  is  very  little  of  Stevenson  besides  the  essays, 
fables,  and  short  stories  that  is  satisfactory;  and 
Treasure  Island  and  Kidnapped,  alone  of  his  longer 
books,  will  belong  to  English  literature.  In  Treas- 
ure Island  the  yarn  spinner's  method  was  fortunate. 
All  the  random  and  whimsical  episodes  chime  in 
and  the  end  is  the  ample  conclusion  of  what  has 
gone  before.  This  can  be  said  of  no  other  long 
tale  except  The  Ebb-Tide,  which,  since  it  has  a 
moral  to  teach,  has  its  end  in  view  from  the  begin- 
ning.    Of  the  shorter  pieces  over  fifty  pages  long, 


194  STEVENSON 

the  only  well-rounded-out  performance,  also  of  the 
moral  order,  is  Dr.  Jekyll. 

But  in  Stevenson  so  great  often  is  the  charm  of 
style  from  page  to  page  that  the  fault  of  incom- 
pleteness or  shiftiness  of  plot  by  no  means  robs 
the  reader  of  his  pleasure.  For  those  who  are  fas- 
cinated by  the  act  of  story-telling,  who  never  really 
wish  for  the  end  and  who  care  little  for  it  in  rela- 
tion to  the  hazard  of  the  incidents,  there  is  much 
entertainment  to  be  had  from  following  the  Ste- 
vensonian  fancy  wherever  it  wanders. 

ii 

In  Stevenson's  first  tale  of  any  length,  "The  Pa- 
vilion on  the  Links,"  written  in  California,  this 
charm  is  at  first  very  subtly  at  work.  One  is  soon 
aware  that  the  plot  is  too  melodramatic  to  come  to 
very  much,  but  meanwhile  there  is  probably  no  bet- 
ter beginning  for  a  wildly  romantic  extravaganza 
than  the  first  chapter,  which  tells  "How  I  Camped 
in  Graden  Seawood  and  Beheld  a  Light  in  the  Pa- 
vilion." The  scenery  here  is  that  of  convincing  and 
enthralling  unreality.  The  desolate  stretch  of  sand 
along  the  German  Ocean,  the  lonely  cabin  at  some 
distance  from  the  wood,  the  mysterious  nocturnal 
landing  from  the  yacht,  the  presence  of  Italians 
in  the  fishing  village,  all  this  induces  an  atmosphere 
tensely  ominous.  It  is  as  well,  however,  an  atmos- 
phere so  hauntingly  dreamlike  that  any  definite 
action  must  play  into  it  at  first  imperceptibly  or 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE     195 

most  certainly  strike  a  false  note;  and  Stevenson 
did  not  know  how  to  manage  this.  The  issue  is  a 
sentimental  anticlimax,  which  turns  the  spell  at  the 
crucial  moment  into  clap-trap. 

But  in  the  next  tale  that  he  attempted,  this  fault 
is  at  least  so  long  delayed,  the  atmosphere  of  sus- 
pense is  so  long  continued,  and  the  dime-novel  con- 
clusion, due  to  what  Stevenson  has  called  "ease  of 
dreaming,"  is  so  brief  as  to  allow  the  whole  piece  al- 
most its  proper  unity  of  tone.  The  Merry  Men,  writ- 
ten just  before  he  began  Treasure  Island,  is,  save 
for  the  very  end,  one  of  Stevenson's  masterpieces, 
and  illustrates  his  weirdly  fantastic  imagination  at 
its  best.  While  he  was  at  work  on  it,  in  July,  1881, 
at  Pitlochry,  he  wrote  Colvin:  "If  ever  I  shall 
make  a  hit  I  have  the  line  now,  as  I  believe."  Cer- 
tainly it  strikes  many  of  the  notes  to  which  his  tem- 
perament always  vibrated;  and  two  years  later,  at 
Hyeres,  the  hearing  of  it  read  by  a  friend  moved 
him  strangely.  He  calls  it  "a  fantastic  sonata 
about  the  sea";  but  later,  realizing  perhaps  that 
the  very  end  did  not  belong  to  any  of  the  themes 
previously  developed  in  the  sonata,  he  had  deter- 
mined to  make  it  much  longer,  "with  a  whole  new 
denouement,  not  quite  clear  to  me."  This  he  never 
accomplished,  not  being  able,  as  his  wife  has  said, 
to  get  a  real  grip  on  his  story.  What  he  needed  to 
do  was  to  prevent  the  story  from  emerging,  with 
bald  farce  at  the  last  moment,  out  of  its  poetic  at- 
mosphere. 

The  dominant  theme  of  this  sonata  about  the  sea 


196  STEVENSON 

is  the  terror  that  surrounds  the  storm-beaten  island 
of  Aros.  The  story  begins  with  a  strong  sense  of 
it  which  is  afterward  never  quite  unfelt  as  the  thin, 
queer  thread  of  the  plot  appears  and  disappears 
through  its  variations.  In  two  pages  of  Eilean 
Aros,  you  are,  as  nearly  always  in  Stevenson,  who 
was  a  master  of  beginnings,  succumbing  to  a  pecu- 
liar enchantment. 

"On  all  this  part  of  the  coast,  and  especially  near' 
Aros,  these  great  granite  rocks  that  I  have  spoken 
of  go  down  together  in  troops  into  the  sea,  like  cattle 
on  a  summer's  day.  There  they  stand,  for  all  the 
world  like  their  neighbours  ashore;  only  the  salt 
water  sobbing  between  them  instead  of  the  quiet 
earth,  and  clots  of  sea-pink  blooming  on  their  sides 
instead  of  heather;  and  the  great  sea  conger  to 
wreathe  about  the  base  of  them  instead  of  the  poi- 
sonous viper  of  the  land.  On  calm  days  you  can  go 
wandering  between  them  in  a  boat  for  hours,  echoes 
following  you  about  the  labyrinth;  but  when  the 
sea  is  up,  Heaven  help  the  man  that  hears  that  caul- 
dron boiling. 

"Off  the  southwest  end  of  Aros  these  blocks  are 
very  many,  and  much  greater  in  size.  Indeed,  they 
must  grow  monstrously  bigger  out  to  sea,  for  there 
must  be  ten  sea  miles  of  open  water  sown  with  them 
as  thick  as  a  country  place  with  houses,  some  stand- 
ing thirty  feet  above  the  tides,  some  covered,  but  all 
perilous  to  ships ;  so  that  on  a  clear,  westerly  blow- 
ing day  I  have  counted,  from  the  top  of  Aros,  the 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE     197 

great  rollers  breaking  white  and  heavy  over  as  many 
as  six-and- forty  buried  reefs.  But  it  is  nearer  in 
shore  that  the  danger  is  worst;  for  the  tide,  here 
running  like  a  mill  race,  makes  a  long  belt  of  broken 
water — a  Roost  we  call  it — at  the  tail  of  the  land. 
I  have  often  been  out  there  in  a  dead  calm  at  the 
slack  of  the  tide;  and  a  strange  place  it  is,  with  the 
sea  swirling  and  combing  up  and  boiling  like  the 
cauldrons  of  a  linn,  and  now  and  again  a  little  danc- 
ing mutter  of  sound  as  though  the  Roost  were  talk- 
ing to  itself.  But  when  the  tide  begins  to  run  again, 
and  above  all  in  heavy  weather,  there  is  no  man 
could  take  a  boat  within  half  a  mile  of  it,  nor  a  ship 
afloat  that  could  either  steer  or  live  in  such  a  place. 
You  can  hear  the  roaring  of  it  six  miles  away.  At 
the  seaward  end  there  comes  the  strongest  of  the 
bubble;  and  it's  here  that  these  big  breakers  dance 
together — the  dance  of  death,  it  may  be  called — 
that  have  got  the  name  in  these  parts  of  the  Merry 
Men.  I  have  heard  it  said  that  they  run  fifty  feet 
high;  but  that  must  be  the  green  water  only,  for 
the  spray  runs  twice  as  high  as  that.  Whether  they 
got  the  name  from  their  movements,  which  are  swift 
and  antic,  or  from  the  shouting  they  make  about 
the  turn  of  the  tide,  so  that  all  Aros  shakes  with  it, 
is  more  than  I  can  tell. 

"The  truth  is,  that  in  a  southwesterly  wind,  that 
part  of  our  archipelago  is  no  better  than  a  trap.  If 
a  ship  got  through  the  reefs,  and  weathered  the 
Merry  Men,  it  would  be  to  come  ashore  on  the  south 
coast  of  Aros,  in  Sandag  Bay,  where  so  many  dis- 


198  STEVENSON 

mal  things  befell  our  family,  as  I  propose  to  tell. 
The  thought  of  all  these  dangers,  in  the  place  I  knew 
so  long,  makes  me  particularly  welcome  the  works 
now  going  forward  to  set  lights  upon  the  headlands 
and  buoys  along  the  channels  of  our  iron-bound, 
inhospitable  islands. 

"The  country  people  had  many  a  story  about 
Aros,  as  I  used  to  hear  from  my  uncle's  man,  Rorie, 
an  old  servant  of  the  Macleans,  who  had  transferred 
his  services  without  afterthought  on  the  occasion  of 
the  marriage.  There  was  some  tale  of  an  unlucky 
creature,  a  sea-kelpie,  that  dwelt  and  did  business  in 
some  fearful  manner  of  his  own  among  the  boiling 
breakers  of  the  Roost.  A  mermaid  had  once  met 
a  piper  on  Sandag  beach,  and  there  sang  to  him  a 
long,  bright  midsummer's  night,  so  that  in  the  morn- 
ing he  was  found  stricken  crazy,  and  from  thence- 
forward, till  the  day  he  died,  said  only  one  form 
of  words;  what  they  were  in  the  original  Gaelic  I 
cannot  tell,  but  they  were  thus  translated:  'Ah, 
the  sweet  singing  out  of  the  sea.'  Seals  that  haunted 
on  that  coast  have  been  known  to  speak  to  man  in 
his  own  tongue,  presaging  great  disasters.  It  was 
here  that  a  certain  saint  first  landed  on  his  voyage 
out  of  Ireland  to  convert  the  Hebrideans.  And,  in- 
deed, I  think  he  had  some  claim  to  be  called  a  saint ; 
for,  with  the  boats  of  that  past  age,  to  make  so 
rough  passage,  and  land  on  such  a  ticklish  coast, 
was  surely  not  far  short  of  the  miraculous.  It  was 
to  him,  or  to  some  of  his  monkish  underlings  who 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE     199 

had  a  cell  there,  that  the  islet  owes  its  holy  and 
beautiful  name,  the  House  of  God." 

Now,  there  is  something  wrong  with  Eilean  Aros. 
The  hero,  on  landing,  is  full  of  a  sense  of  ominous 
locality.  Undefined  memories  of  evil  haunt  the 
air,  suspicions  of  foul  play.  Whether  these  belong 
normally  to  the  atmosphere  of  the  place  or  whether 
they  emanate  from  the  strange  mental  state  of  Un- 
cle Darnaway  is  not  certain.  The  uncanny  conversa- 
tion of  the  old  man,  who  is  one  of  Stevenson's 
best  brief  characters,  is  perhaps  the  most  powerful 
source  of  this  doubt. 

"  'Was  it  there  ?'  asked  my  uncle. 

"  'Ou,  ay !'  said  Rorie. 

"I  observed  that  they  both  spoke  in  a  manner  of 
aside,  and  with  some  show  of  embarrassment,  and 
that  Mary  herself  appeared  to  colour,  and  looked 
down  on  her  plate.  Partly  to  show  my  knowledge, 
and  so  relieve  the  party  from  an  awkward  strain, 
partly  because  I  was  curious,  I  pursued  the  subject. 

"  'You  mean  the  fish  ?'  I  asked. 

"  'Whatten  fish  ?'  cried  my  uncle.  'Fish,  quo'  he ! 
Fish !  Your  een  are  f  u'  o'  fatness,  man ;  your  heid 
dozened  wi'  carnal  leir.     Fish !  it's  a  bogle !' 

"He  spoke  with  great  vehemence,  as  though  an- 
gry; and  perhaps  I  was  not  very  willing  to  be  put 
down  so  shortly,  for  young  men  are  disputatious. 
At  least  I  remember  I  retorted  hotly,  crying  out 
upon  childish  superstitions. 


200  STEVENSON 

"  'And  ye  come  frae  the  College !'  sneered  Uncle 
Gordon.  'Glide  kens  what  they. learn  folk  there; 
it's  no  muckle  service  onyway.  Do  ye  think,  man, 
that  there's  naething  in  a'  yon  saut  wilderness  o'  a 
world  oot  wast  there,  wi'  the  sea  grasses  growin', 
an'  the  sea  beasts  fechtin',  an'  the  sun  glintin'  down 
into  it  day  by  day?  Na;  the  sea's  like  the  land,  but 
fearsomer.  If  there's  folk  ashore,  there's  folk  in 
the  sea — deid  they  may  be,  but  they're  folk  what- 
ever; and  as  for  deils,  there's  nane  that's  like  the 
sea  deils.  There's  no  sae  muckle  harm  in  the  land 
deils,  when  a's  said  and  done.  Lang  syne,  when  I 
was  a  callant  in  the  south  country,  I  mind  there  was 
an  auld,  bald  bogle  in  the  Peewie  Moss.  I  got  a 
glisk  o'  him  mysel',  sittin'  on  his  hunkers  in  a  hag, 
as  grey's  a  tombstane.  An',  troth,  he  was  a  fear- 
some-like taed.  But  he  steered  naebody.  Nae 
doobt,  if  ane  that  was  a  reprobate,  ane  the  Lord 
hated,  had  gane  by  there  wi'  his  sin  still  upon  his 
stamach,  nae  doobt  the  creature  would  hae  lowped 
upo'  the  likes  o'  him.  But  there's  deils  in  the  deep 
sea  would  yoke  on  a  communicant!  Eh,  sirs,  if  ye 
had  gane  doon  wi'  the  puir  lads  in  the  Christ- Anna, 
ye  would  ken  by  now  the  mercy  o'  the  seas.  If  ye 
had  sailed  it  for  as  lang  as  me,  ye  would  hate  the 
thocht  of  it  as  I  do.  If  ye  had  but  used  the  een  God 
gave  ye,  ye  would  hae  learned  the  wickedness  o'  that 
fause,  saut,  cauld,  bullering  creature,  and  of  a'  that's 
in  it  by  the  Lord's  permission :  labsters  an'  partans, 
an'  sic  like,  howking  in  the  deid;  muckle,  gutsy, 
blawing  whales;  an'  fish — the  hale  clan  o'  them — 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    201 

cauld-wamed,  blind-eed  uncanny  ferlies.     O,  sirs,' 
he  cried,  'the  horror — the  horror  o'  the  sea!' 


i>  >> 


Very  gradually  it  dawns  on  the  reader  that  in 
Uncle  Darnaway's  mind  is  the  source  of  the  evil 
which  permeates  the  whole  island.  In  spite  of  ex- 
ternal details  that  arouse  suspicion,  like  the  rare 
wood  in  the  thwarts  of  the  coble,  noticed  in  the 
passage  to  Aros,  only  a  faint  guess  about  the  whole 
strange  matter  can  be  made  till  all  the  complications 
are  complete  at  the  end  of  Chapter  III.  Because 
the  threatened  evil  is  really  psychic,  rather  than  an 
external  thing,  the  author  has  from  now  on,  a  very 
puzzling  situation  to  handle  if  he  wishes  to  pre- 
serve its  peculiar  horror.  The  solution  adopted  at 
the  last  moment  is  crude.  He  brings  on  a  storm, 
turns  his  mad  murderer  loose  in  the  midst  of  it, 
and  winds  the  matter  up  without  more  ado.  Until 
the  actual  breaking  of  the  storm  the  piece  is  a  won- 
derfully fluent  fantasy.  From  that  point  on,  it  is 
largely  mechanical  tour  de  force — "a  braw  nicht  for 
a  shipwreck !"  and  not  much  else — "twa  in  ae  twal- 
month!  eh,  but  the  Merry  Men'll  dance  bonny!" 

So  far  as  popularity  goes,  Stevenson  was  right 
in  thinking  that  he  had  found  his  line  in  the  roman- 
tic tale  of  terror.  He  had  just  written  "Thrawn 
Janet,"  an  inimitable  piece  in  the  Uncle  Darnaway 
key,  which,  together  with  the  tale  of  Todd  Lapraik 
in  David  Balfour,  seems,  incidentally,  to  prove  the 
superiority  qf  the  Scots  vocabulary  for  spookiness 
over  anything  imaginable  in  plain  English.     But 


202  STEVENSON 

where  the  creation  of  terror  is  the  main  purpose, 
Stevenson  is  really  not  often  so  successful  as  where 
it  accompanies  a  moral  theme.  The  stories  of 
"Olalla"  and  "The  Body  Snatcher"  do  not  compare 
in  imaginative  effects  with  "Markheim"  or  Dr. 
Jekyll  or  "The  Bottle  Imp"  or  "The  Isle  of  Voices," 
which  are  his  masterpieces.  The  first  two  stories  are 
practically  failures ;  the  others  are.  at  once  both  far 
more  terrible  and  far  more  interesting  for  their 
moral  issue.  So,  in  the  long  romances,  the  introduc- 
tion of  terror  scenes  for  their  own  sake  usually 
brought  in  as  much  clap-trap  as  thrills.  The  least 
satisfactory  part  of  The  Master  is  the  live-burial  in 
the  wilderness.  The  devil-work  is  by  no  means  the 
best  part  of  "The  Beach  of  Falesa."  Melodrama  is 
never  quite  out  of  sight  in  these  places,  and  melo- 
drama uncombined  with  farce  is  rarely  successful  in 
Stevenson. 


Ill 


In  two  novels,  The  Master  and  the  unfinished 
Weir,  Stevenson  had  it  in  mind  to  involve  in  an 
atmosphere  of  strangeness  and  terror  a  more  seri- 
ous dramatic  problem  than  he  has  elsewhere 
presented.  In  The  Master  he  all  but  succeeded. 
The  theme  is  of  a  fascinating  romantic  rarity,  and 
yet  with  a  sharp  reference  to  life  as  the  reader  has 
himself  observed  it.  The  simplest  terms  of  the 
plot  give  us  an  essentially  dramatic  confrontation 
between  two  brothers :    At  the  time  of  the  Forty-five 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    203 

the  elder  of  the  two  Duries  of  Ballantrae,  -sons  of 
Lord  Durrisdeer,  joins  the  rebels  at  Culloden,  and 
is  forced  afterward  to  live  the  life  of  a  wanderer 
and  exile.  His  younger  brother,  Henry,  thus  in- 
herits, not  only  the  estate,  but  also  the  girl  who 
should  have  been  the  Master's  wife.  Presently  the 
Master  returns,  the  feeling  for  Prince  Charlie's  side 
being  so  strong  in  the  neighborhood  as  to  allow  this 
without  much  fear  of  his  betrayal  to  the  authorities. 
By  nature  a  proud,  brilliant,  and  malicious  man, 
his  trials  and  adventures  in  strange  lands  and  on 
the  sea  have  given  him  a  streak  of  diabolical  per- 
versity. He  at  once  begins  a  systematic  and  vastly 
clever  persecution  of  his  brother,  Henry,  which 
seems  to  all  outsiders,  and  even  to  his  brother's 
wife,  to  put  Henry  in  the  wrong.  The  duel  be- 
tween the  two  goes  on  under  the  blind  eyes  of  the 
girl  who  would  have  married  the  Master  had  for- 
tune favored.  Romantically  in  love  with  him,  yet 
always  nominally  faithful  to  her  husband,  she  be- 
comes the  perverse  arbiter  of  the  destinies  of  this 
inglorious  combat.  An  oppressive  terror,  an  om- 
inousness  which  could  only  be  dispelled  by  murder, 
begins  to  develop.  It  assumes  gigantic  psychological 
proportions.  The  character  and  purposes  of  the 
Master  loom  ever  more  and  more  dominant,  and 
even  in  temporary  defeat  only  more  baffling.  He 
is  driven  out  of  Ballantrae,  hovers  for  years,  a  sort 
of  roving  Nemesis,  over  the  invisible  issue,  and  at 
last  returns,  fortified  in  villainy  by  the  presence  of 
a    mysterious    Indian    servant,     Secundra    Dass. 


204  STEVENSON 

Meanwhile  Henry  has  justified  himself  to  his  wife. 
They  vainly  attempt  to  evade  the  Master  by  fleeing 
to  New  York,  thus  making  possible  in  the  plot,  the 
preconceived  finale,  a  live  burial  in  the  Adirondack 
forest,  over  which  Secundra  Dass  presides.  All 
this  last  part  of  the  adventure,  including  the  inci- 
dents in  India  and  Mr.  Mackellar's  journey  with 
the  Master  across  the  Atlantic,  a  model  of  sardonic 
humor,  seems  to  be  tacked  on  to  the  rest  of  the 
narrative.  It  is  peculiarly  oppressive,  and  the  end 
brings  no  relief,  no  sense  of  issuing  from  what  has 
been  a  rather  meaningless  cul-de-sac. 

In  his  essay  on  "The  Genesis  of  The  Master  of 
Ballantrae"  Stevenson  says  that  he  planned  the  tale 
to  be  a  tale  of  many  lands,  and  that  having  located 
the  main  action  in  Ballantrae,  the  end  in  the  Adiron- 
dacks,  he  needed  only  to  get  the  Master  in  and  out 
of  India  to  complete  his  scheme.  But  obviously  the 
true  scheme  is  alone  the  confrontation  of  the  two 
brothers.  It  is  there  that  our  whole  attention  is 
absorbed  and  not  in  the  miscellaneous  adventure. 
There  is,  of  course,  no  reason  why  each  element 
in  the  story  should  not  enhance  the  others,  or  why 
they  should  not  be  inextricably  linked.  But  the 
story  has  Stevenson's  characteristic  defects.  The 
main  theme  is  that  of  a  problem  novel ;  the  method 
is  that  of  the  fantastically  conceived  romance.  The 
two  join  only  with  mutual  embarrassment.  Also  it 
must  be  confessed,  even  by  those  for  whom  the 
"grand  carpentry"  style  in  fiction  has  an  unerring 
charm,  that  the  end  of  this  matter  of  the  two  Duris- 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    205 

deers  is  mere  melodrama — a  preconceived  end,  to  be 
sure,  but  not  an  adherent  end.  It  neither  throws  a 
light  back  over  the  whole,  nor  serves  to  shroud  the 
Master's  strange  character  from  our  final  scrutiny. 

To  the  engrossing  interest  of  the  narrative 
these  defects  may  not  appear  fatal — in  Stevenson 
no  defects  of  structure  ever  count  as  absolutely 
fatal.  For  being  vastly  clever  page  by  page  and 
always  a  stylist,  he  can  piece  out,  hopefully  putting 
off  the  day  of  reckoning  till  the  reader's  ear  has 
been  captured.  And  nowhere  in  Stevenson  are 
there  scenes  of  such  dramatic  deftness  as  those 
which  show  the  Master  on  his  first  return,  always 
a  courteous,  brilliant,  cheerful  gentleman  in  the 
presence  of  Henry's  wife,  and  always  the  fiend 
when  alone  with  Henry.  Of  all  this  the  duel  with 
swords  fought  in  the  garden  in  the  still  winter 
night,  is  a  true  "marking  incident."  Had  it  been 
more  elaborately  led  up  to,  with  a  more  careful 
picture  of  the  locality  and  of  the  characters,  it 
might  well  have  served  to  bring  the  plot  to  a  more 
direct  and  reasonable  end,  and  have  taken  the  place 
of  the  murder  which,  as  I  say,  the  atmosphere  seems 
to  demand.  Certainly  the  Master  is,  at  this  moment 
of  the  duel,  as  we  see  him  by  the  light  of  the  candles 
in  the  midst  of  the  frosted  trees,  one  of  the  great 
villains  of  literature. 

Let  us  listen  for  a  few  moments  to  Mr.  Mackel- 
lar,  the  secretary,  who  reports  this  matter.  It  is 
perhaps  the  most  powerful  scene  in  all  Stevenson. 


206  STEVENSON 


ACCOUNT  OF  ALL  THAT   PASSED  ON   THE   NIGHT  OF 
FEBRUARY  27,    1757 

"To  show  how  far  affairs  had  gone  with  Mr. 
Henry,  I  will  give  some  words  of  his,  uttered  (as 
I  have  cause  not  to  forget)  upon  the  26th  of  Feb- 
ruary, 1757.  It  was  unseasonable  weather,  a  cast 
back  into  Winter:  windless,  bitter  cold,  the  world 
all  white  with  rime,  the  sky  low  and  gray :  the  sea 
black  and  silent  like  a  quarry-hole.  Mr.  Henry  sat 
close  by  the  fire,  and  debated  (as  was  now  common 
with  him)  whether  'a  man*  should  'do  things/ 
whether  'interference  was  wise/  and  the  like  gen- 
eral propositions,  which  each  of  us  particularly  ap- 
plied. I  was  by  the  window,  looking  out,  when 
there  passed  below  me  the  Master,  Mrs.  Henry,  and 
Miss  Katharine,  that  now  constant  trio.  The  child 
was  running  to  and  fro,  delighted  with  the  frost ;  the 
Master  spoke  close  in  the  lady's  ear  with  what 
seemed  (even  from  so  far)  a  devilish  grace  of  in- 
sinuation ;  and  she  on  her  part  looked  on  the  ground 
like  a  person  lost  in  listening.  I  broke  out  of  my 
reserve. 

"  'If  I  were  you,  Mr.  Henry/  said  I,  'I  would  deal 
openly  with  my  lord/ 

"  'Mackellar,  Mackellar/  said  he,  'you  do  not  see 
the  weakness  of  my  ground.  I  can  carry  no  such 
base  thoughts  to  any  one — to  my  father  least  of  all ; 
that  would  be  to  fall  into  the  bottom  of  his  scorn. 
The  weakness  of  my  ground,'  he  continued,  'lies  in 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    207 

myself,  that  I  am  not  one  who  engages*love.  I  have 
their  gratitude,  they  all  tell  me  that;  I  have  a  rich 
estate  of  it !  But  I  am  not  present  in  their  minds ; 
they  are  moved  neither  to  think  with  me  nor  to 
think  for  me.  There  is  my  loss !'  He  got  to  his  feet, 
and  trod  down  the  fire.  'But  some  method  must  be 
found,  Mackellar,'  said  he,  looking  at  me  suddenly 
over  his  shoulder ;  'some  way  must  be  found.  I  am 
a  man  of  a  great  deal  of  patience — far  too  much — 
far  too  much.  I  begin  to  despise  myself.  And 
yet,  sure,  never  was  a  man  involved  in  such  a  toil  f 
He  fell  back  to  his  brooding. 

"  'Cheer  up,'  said  I.    'It  will  burst  of  itself/ 

"  'I  am  far  past  anger  now,'  says  he,  which  had 
so  little  coherency  with  my  own  observation  that  I 
let  both  fall. 

"On  the  evening  of  the  interview  referred  to,  the 
Master  went  abroad;  he  was  abroad  a  great  deal 
of  the  next  day  also,  that  fatal  27th;  but  where  he 
went,  or  what  he  did,  we  never  concerned  ourselves 
to  ask  until  next  day.  If  we  had  done  so,  and  by 
any  chance  found  out,  it  might  have  changed  all. 
But  as  all  we  did  was  done  in  ignorance,  and  should 
be  so  judged,  I  shall  so  narrate  these  passages  as 
they  appeared  to  us  in  the  moment  of  their  birth, 
and  reserve  all  that  I  since  discovered  for  the  time 
of  its  discovery.  For  I  have  now  come  to  one  of 
the  dark  parts  of  my  narrative,  and  must  engage 
the  reader's  indulgence  for  my  patron. 

"All  the  27th  that  rigorous  weather  endured:  a 
stifling  cold;  the  folk  passing  about  like  smoking 


208  STEVENSON 

chimneys ;  the  wide  hearth  in  the  hall  piled  high  with 
fuel;  som£  of  the  spring  birds  that  had  already 
blundered  north  into  our  neighbourhood,  besieging 
the  windows  of  the  house  or  trotting  on  the  frozen 
turf  like  things  distracted.  About  noon  there  came 
a  blink  of  sunshine;  showing  a  very  pretty,  wintry, 
frosty  landscape  of  white  hills  and  woods,  with 
Crail's  lugger  waiting  for  a  wind  under  the  Craig 
Head,  and  the  smoke  mounting  straight  into  the  air 
from  every  farm  and  cottage.  With  the  coming  of 
night,  the  haze  closed  in  overhead;  it  fell  dark  and 
still  and  starless,  and  exceeding  cold:  a  night  the 
most  unseasonable,  fit  for  strange  events. 

"Mrs.  Henry  withdrew,  as  was  now  her  custom, 
very  early.  We  had  set  ourselves  of  late  to  pass 
the  evening  with  a  game  of  cards;  another  mark 
that  our  visitor  was  wearying  mightily  of  the  life 
at  Durrisdeer;  and  we  had  not  been  long  at  this 
when  my  old  lord  slipped  from  his  place  beside  the 
fire,  and  was  off  without  a  word  to  seek  the  warmth 
of  bed.  The  three  thus  left  together  had  neither 
love  nor  courtesy  to  share;  not  one  of  us  would 
have  sat  up  one  instant  to  oblige  another;  yet  from 
the  influence  of  custom,  and  as  the  cards  had  just 
been  dealt,  we  continued  the  form  of  playing  out 
the  round.  I  should  say  we  were  late  sitters;  and 
though  my  lord  had  departed  earlier  than  was  his 
custom,  twelve  was  already  gone  some  time  upon 
the  clock,  and  the  servants  long  ago  in  bed.  An- 
other thing  I  should  say,  that  although  I  never  saw 
the  Master  anyway  affected  with  liquor,  he  had  been 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    209 

drinking  freely,  and  was  perhaps  (although  he 
showed  it  not)  a  trifle  heated. 

"Anyway,  he  now  practised  one  of  his  transi- 
tions; and  so  soon  as  the  door  closed  behind  my 
lord,  and  without  the  smallest  change  of  voice, 
shifted  from  ordinary  civil  talk  into  a  stream  of 
insult. 

"  'My  dear  Henry,  it  is  yours  to  play/  he  had 
been  saying,  and  now  continued:  'It  is  a  very 
strange  thing  how,  even  in  so  small  a  matter  as  a 
game  of  cards,  you  display  your  rusticity.  You 
play,  Jacob,  like  a  bonnet  laird,  or  a  sailor  in  a 
tavern.  The  same  dulness,  the  same  petty  greed, 
cette  lenteur  d'hebete  qui  me  fait  rager;  it  is  strange 
I  should  have  such  a  brother.  Even  Square-toes 
has  a  certain  vivacity  when  his  stake  is  imperilled; 
but  the  dreariness  of  a  game  with  you  I  positively 
lack  language  to  depict/ 

"Mr.  Henry  continued  to  look  at  his  cards,  as 
though  very  maturely  considering  some  play;  but 
his  mind  was  elsewhere. 

"  'Dear  God,  will  this  never  be  done  V  cries  the 
Master.  'Quel  lourdeau!  But  why  do  I  trouble  you 
with  French  expressions,  which  are  lost  on  such  an 
ignoramus  ?  A  lourdeau,  my  dear  brother,  is  as  we 
might  say  a  bumpkin,  a  clown,  a  clodpole :  a  fellow 
without  grace,  lightness,  quickness ;  any  gift  of  pleas- 
ing, any  natural  brilliancy:  such  a  one  as  you  shall 
see,  when  you  desire,  by  looking  in  the  mirror.  I 
tell  you  these  things  for  your  good,  I  assure  you; 
and  besides,  Square-toes'  (looking  at  me  and  stifling 


210  STEVENSON 

a  yawn),  'it  is  one  of  my  diversions  in  this  very 
dreary  spot  to  toast  you  and  your  master  at  the  fire 
like  chestnuts.  I  have  great  pleasure  in  your  case, 
for  I  observe  the  nickname  (rustic  as  it  is)  has 
always  the  power  to  make  you  writhe.  But  some- 
times I  have  more  trouble  with  this  dear  fellow  here, 
who  seems  to  have  gone  to  sleep  upon  his  cards. 
Do  you  not  see  the  applicability  of  the  epithet  I  have 
just  explained,  dear  Henry?  Let  me  show  you. 
For  instance,  with  all  those  solid  qualities  which  I 
delight  to  recognise  in  you,  I  never  knew  a  woman 
who  did  not  prefer  me — nor,  I  think/  he  continued, 
with  the  most  silken  deliberation,  'I  think — who  did 
not  continue  to  prefer  me/ 

"Mr.  Henry  laid  down  his  cards.  He  rose  to  his 
feet  very  softly,  and  seemed  all  the  while  like  a  per- 
son in  deep  thought.  'You  coward !'  he  said  gently, 
as  if  to  himself.  And  then,  with  neither  hurry  nor 
any  particular  violence,  he  struck  the  Master  in  the 
mouth. 

"The  Master  sprang  to  his  feet  like  one  trans- 
figured; I  had  never  seen  the  man  so  beautiful.  'A 
blow !'  he  cried.  'I  would  not  take  a  blow  from  God 
Almighty  !' 

"  'Lower  your  voice,'  said  Mr.  Henry.  'Do  you 
wish  my  father  to  interfere  for  you  again?' 

"  'Gentlemen,  gentlemen,'  I  cried,  and  sought  to 
come  between  them. 

"The  Master  caught  me  by  the  shoulder,  held  me 
at  arm's  length,  and  still  addressing  his  brother: 
'Do  you  know  what  this  means  ?'  said  he. 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    211 

"  'It  was  the  most  deliberate  act  of  my  life/  says 
Mr.  Henry. 

"  'I  must  have  blood,  I  must  have  blood  for  this/ 
says  the  Master. 

H  'Please  God  it  shall  be  yours,'  said  Mr.  Henry ; 
and  he  went  to  the  wall  and  took  down  a  pair  of 
swords  that  hung  there  with  others,  naked.  These 
he  presented  to  the  Master  by  the  points.  'Mackel- 
lar  shall  see  us  play  fair/  said  Mr.  Henry.  'I  think 
it  very  needful/ 

"  'You  need  insult  me  no  more/  said  the  Master, 
taking  one  of  the  swords  at  random.  'I  have  hated 
you  all  my  life/ 

"  'My  father  is  but  newly  gone  to  bed/  said  Mr. 
Henry.  'We  must  go  somewhere  forth  of  the 
house/ 

"  'There  is  an  excellent  place  in  the  long  shrub- 
bery,' said  the  Master. 

"  'Gentlemen,'  said  I,  'shame  upon  you  both !  Sons 
of  the  same  mother,  would  you  turn  against  the  life 
she  gave  you?' 

"  'Even  so,  Mackellar/  said  Mr.  Henry,  with  the 
same  perfect  quietude  of  manner  he  had  shown 
throughout. 

"  'It  is  what  I  will  prevent/  said  I. 

"And  now  here  is  a  blot  upon  my  life.  At  these 
words  of  mine  the  Master  turned  his  blade  against 
my  bosom ;  I  saw  the  light  run  along  the  steel ;  and 
I  threw  up  my  arms  and  fell  to  my  knees  before 
him  on  the  floor.    'No,  no/  I  cried,  like  a  baby. 

"  'We  shall  have  no  more  trouble  with  him,'  said 


212  STEVENSON 

the  Master.  'It  is  a  good  thing  to  have  a  coward  in 
the  house.' 

"  'We  must  have  light,'  said  Mr.  Henry,  as  though 
there  had  been  no  interruption. 

"  This  trembler  can  bring  a  pair  of  candles,'  said 
the  Master. 

"To  my  shame,  be  it  said,  I  was  still  so  blinded 
with  the  flashing  of  that  bare  sword  that  I  volun- 
teered to  bring  a  lantern. 

"  'We  do  not  need  a  1-1-lantern,'  says  the  Master, 
mocking  me.  'There  is  no  breath  of  air.  Come, 
get  to  your  feet,  take  a  pair  of  lights,  and  go  be- 
fore. I  am  close  behind  with  this — '  making  the 
blade  glitter  as  he  spoke. 

"I  took  up  the  candlesticks  and  went  before  them, 
steps  that  I  would  give  my  hand  to  recall;  but  a 
coward  is  a  slave  at  the  best;  and  even  as  I  went, 
my  teeth  smote  each  other  in  my  mouth.  It  was 
as  he  had  said:  there  was  no  breath  stirring;  a 
windless  stricture  of  frost  had  bound  the  air;  and 
as  we  went  forth  in  the  shine  of  the  candles,  the 
blackness  was  like  a  roof  over  our  heads.  Never  a 
word  was  said;  there  was  never  a  sound  but  the 
creaking  of  our  steps  along  the  frozen  path.  The 
cold  of  the  night  fell  about  me  like  a  bucket  of 
water;  I  shook  as  I  went  with  more  than  terror; 
but  my  companions,  bare-headed  like  myself,  and 
fresh  from  the  warm  hall,  appeared  not  even  con- 
scious of  the  change. 

"  'Here  is  the  place,'  said  the  Master.  'Set  down 
the  candles.' 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    213 

"I  did  as  he  bid  me,  and  presently  the  flames  went 
up,  as  steady  as  in  a  chamber,  in  the  midst  of  the 
frosted  trees,  and  I  beheld  these  two  brothers  take 
their  places. 

"  'The  light  is  something  in  my  eyes,'  said  the 
Master. 

"  'I  will  give  you  every  advantage,'  replied  Mr. 
Henry,  shifting  his  ground,  'for  I  think  you  are 
about  to  die.'  He  spoke  rather  sadly  than  other- 
wise, yet  there  was  a  ring  in  his  voice. 

"  'Henry  Dune/  said  the  Master,  'two  words  be- 
fore I  begin.  You  are  a  fencer,  you  can  hold  a 
foil ;  you  little  know  what  a  change  it  makes  to  hold 
a  sword !  And  by  that  I  know  you  are  to  fall.  But 
see  how  strong  is  my  situation!  If  you  fall,  I  shift 
out  of  this  country  to  where  my  money  is  before  me. 
If  I  fall,  where  are  you?  My  father,  your  wife — 
who  is  in  love  with  me,  as  you  very  well  know — 
your  child  even,  who  prefers  me  to  yourself: — how 
will  these  avenge  me!  Had  you  thought  of  that, 
dear  Henry?'  He  looked  at  his  brother  with  a 
smile;  then  made  a  fencing-room  salute. 

"Never  a  word  said  Mr.  Henry,  but  saluted  too, 
and  the  swords  rang  together. 

"I  am  no  judge  of  the  play;  my  head,  besides,  was 
gone  with  cold  and  fear  and  horror;  but  it  seems 
that  Mr.  Henry  took  and  kept  the  upper  hand  from 
the  engagement,  crowding  in  upon  his  foe  with  a 
contained  and  glowing  fury.  Nearer  and  nearer  he 
crept  upon  the  man,  till  of  a  sudden  the  Master 
leaped  back  with  a  little  sobbing  oath;  and  I  be- 


214  STEVENSON 

lieve  the  movement  brought  the  light  once  more 
against  his  eyes.  To  it  they  went  again,  on  the 
fresh  ground;  but  now  methought  closer,  Mr.  Henry 
pressing  more  outrageously,  the  Master  beyond 
doubt  with  shaken  confidence.  For  it  is  beyond 
doubt  he  now  recognised  himself  for  lost,  and  had 
some  taste  of  the  cold  agony  of  fear;  or  he  had 
never  attempted  the  foul  stroke.  I  cannot  say  I 
followed  it,  my  untrained  eye  was  never  quick 
enough  to  seize  details,  but  it  appears  he  caught  his 
brother's  blade  with  his  left  hand,  a  practise  not 
permitted.  Certainly  Mr.  Henry  only  saved  himself 
by  leaping  on  one  side;  as  certainly  the  Master, 
lunging  in  the  air,  stumbled  on  his  knee,  and  before 
he  could  move  the  sword  was  through  his  body. 

"I  cried  out  with  a  stifled  scream,  and  ran  in; 
but  the  body  was  already  fallen  to  the  ground,  where 
it  writhed  a  moment  like  a  trodden  worm,  and  then 
lay  motionless. 

"  'Look  at  his  left  hand,'  said  Mr.  Henry. 

"  It  is  all  bloody,'  said  I. 

"'On  the  inside?'  said  he. 

"  'It  is  cut  on  the  inside,'  said  I. 

"  'I  thought  so,'  said  he,  and  turned  his  back. 

"I  opened  the  man's  clothes;  the  heart  was  quite 
still,  it  gave  not  a  flutter. 

"  'God  forgive  us,  Mr.  Henry !'  said  I.  'He  is 
dead.' 

"  'Dead  ?'  he  repeated,  a  little  stupidly ;  and  then 
with  a  rising  tone,  'Dead  ?  dead  ?'  says  he,  and  sud- 
denly casts  his  bloody  sword  upon  the  ground. 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    215 

"  'What  must  we  do?'  said  I.  'Be  yourself,  sir. 
It  is  too  late  now :  you  must  be  yourself.' 

"He  turned  and  stared  at  me.  'Oh,  Mackellar!' 
says  he,  and  put  his  face  in  his  hands. 

"I  plucked  him  by  the  coat.  'For  God's  sake,  for 
all  our  sakes,  be  more  courageous !'  said  I.  'What 
must  we  do  ?' 

"He  showed  me  his  face  with  the  same  stupid 
stare.  'Do?'  says  he.  And  with  that  his  eye  fell  on 
the  body,  and  'Oh!'  he  cries  out,  with  his  hand  to 
his  brow,  as  if  he  had  never  remembered;  and,  turn- 
ing from  me,  made  off  towards  the  house  of  Durris- 
deer  at  a  strange  stumbling  run. 

"I  stood  a  moment  mused ;  then  it  seemed  to  me 
my  duty  lay  most  plain  on  the  side  of  the  living; 
and  I  ran  after  him,  leaving  the  candles  on  the 
frosty  ground  and  the  body  lying  in  their  light  under 
the  trees.  But  run  as  I  pleased,  he  had  the  start  of 
me,  and  was  got  into  the  house,  and  up  to  the  hall, 
where  I  found  him  standing  before  the  fire  with  his 
face  once  more  in  his  hands,  and  as  he  so  stood 
he  visibly  shuddered. 

"  'Mr.  Henry,  Mr.  Henry,'  I  said,  'this  will  be 
the  ruin  of  us  all.' 

"  'What  is  this  that  I  have  done  ?'  cries  he,  and 
then  looking  upon  me  with  a  countenance  that  I 
shall  never  forget,  'Who  is  to  tell  the  old  man?'  he 
said. 

"The  word  knocked  at  my  heart;  but  it  was  no 
time  for  weakness.  I  went  and  poured  him  out  a 
glass  of  brandy.     'Drink  that,'   said  I,   'drink  it 


216  STEVENSON 

down/  I  forced  him  to  swallow  it  like  a  child ;  and, 
being  still  perished  with  the  cold  of  the  night,  I  fol- 
lowed his  example. 

"  'It  has  to  be  told,  Mackellar,'  said  he.  'It  must 
be  told/  And  he  fell  suddenly  in  a  seat — my  old 
lord's  seat  by  the  chimney-side — and  was  shaken 
with  dry  sobs. 

"Dismay  came  upon  my  soul;  it  was  plain  there 
was  no  help  in  Mr.  Henry.  'Well/  said  I,  'sit  there, 
and  leave  all  to  me/  And  taking  a  candle  in  my 
hand,  I  set  forth  out  of  the  room  in  the  dark  house. 
There  was  no  movement;  I  must  suppose  that  all 
had  gone  unobserved;  and  I  was  now  to  consider 
how  to  smuggle  through  the  rest  with  the  like  se- 
crecy. It  was  no  hour  for  scruples;  and  I  opened 
my  lady's  door  without  so  much  as  a  knock,  and 
passed  boldly  in. 

"  'There  is  some  calamity  happened,'  she  cried, 
sitting  up  in  bed. 

"  'Madam,'  said  I,  T  will  go  forth  again  into  the 
passage;  and  do  you  get  as  quickly  as  you  can  into 
your  clothes.    There  is  much  to  be  done.' 

"She  troubled  me  with  no  questions,  nor  did  she 
keep  me  waiting.  Ere  I  had  time  to  prepare  a  word 
of  that  which  I  must  say  to  her,  she  was  on  the 
threshold  signing  me  to  enter. 

"  'Madam,'  said  I,  'if  you  cannot  be  very  brave, 
I  must  go  elsewhere ;  for  if  no  one  helps  me  to-night, 
there  is  an  end  of  the  house  of  Durrisdeer/ 

"  'I  am  very  courageous/  said  she ;  and  she  looked 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    217 

at  me  with  a  sort  of  smile,  very  painful  to  see,  but 
very  brave  too. 

"  'It  has  come  to  a  duel,'  said  I. 

"'A  duel?'  she  repeated.  'A  duel!  Henry 
and—' 

"  'And  the  Master/  said  I.  'Things  have  been 
borne  so  long,  things  of  which  you  know  nothing, 
which  you  would  not  believe  if  I  should  tell.  But 
to-night  it  went  too  far,  and  when  he  insulted 
you — ' 

'"Stop/  said  she.    'He?    Who?' 

"  'Oh !  madam,'  cried  I,  my  bitterness  breaking 
forth,  'do  you  ask  me  such  a  question?  Indeed, 
then,  I  may  go  elsewhere  for  help;  there  is  none 
here!' 

"  'I  do  not  know  in  what  I  have  offended  you,' 
said  she.    'Forgive  me ;  put  me  out  of  this  suspense.' 

"But  I  dared  not  tell  her  yet;  I  felt  not  sure  of 
her;  and  at  the  doubt,  and  under  the  sense  of  im- 
potence it  brought  with  it,  I  turned  on  the  poor 
woman  with  something  near  to  anger. 

"  'Madam,'  said  I,  'we  are  speaking  of  two  men : 
one  of  them  insulted  you,  and  you  ask  me  which. 
I  will  help  you  to  the  answer.  With  one  of  these 
men  you  have  spent  all  your  hours:  has  the  other 
reproached  you?  To  one  you  have  been  always 
kind;  to  the  other,  as  God  sees  me  and  judges  be- 
tween us  two,  I  think  not  always :  has  his  love  ever 
failed  you?  To-night  one  of  these  two  men  told 
the  other,  in  my  hearing— the  hearing  of  a  hire4 


218  STEVENSON 

stranger, — that  you  were  in  love  with  him.  Before 
I  say  one  word,  you  shall  answer  your  own  ques- 
tion: Which  was  it?  Nay,  madam,  you  shall  an- 
swer me  another:  If  it  has  come  to  this  dreadful 
end,  whose  fault  is  it?' 

"She  stared  at  me  like  one  dazzled.  'Good  God !' 
she  said  once,  in  a  kind  of  bursting  exclamation; 
and  then  a  second  time  in  a  whisper  to  herself : 
'Great  God! — In  the  name  of  mercy,  Mackellar, 
what  is  wrong?'  she  cried.  'I  am  made  up;  I  can 
hear  all/ 

"  'You  are  not  fit  to  hear/  said  I.  'Whatever  it 
was,  you  shall  say  first  it  was  your  fault.' 

"  'Oh!'  she  cried,  with  a  gesture  of  wringing  her 
hands,  'this  man  will  drive  me  mad!  Can  you  not 
put  me  out  of  your  thoughts?' 

"  'I  think  not  once  of  you,'  I  cried.  'I  think  of 
none  but  my  dear  unhappy  master.' 

"  'Ah !'  she  cried,  with  her  hand  to  her  heart,  'is 
Henry  dead?' 

"  'Lower  your  voice,'  said  I.    'The  other.' 

"I  saw  her  sway  like  something  stricken  by  the 
wind ;  and  I  know  not  whether  in  cowardice  or  mis- 
ery, turned  aside  and  looked  upon  the  floor.  'These 
are  dreadful  tidings,'  said  I  at  length,  when  her 
silence  began  to  put  me  in  some  fear;  'and  you  and 
I  behove  to  be  the  more  bold  if  the  house  is  to  be 
saved.'  Still  she  answered  nothing.  'There  is  Miss 
Katharine,  besides,'  I  added;  'unless  we  bring  this 
matter  through  her  inheritance  is  like  to  be  of 
shame.' 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    219 

"I  do  not  know  if  it  was  the  thought  of  her  child 
or  the  naked  word  shame,  that  gave  her  deliverance; 
at  least,  I  had  no  sooner  spoken  than  a  sound  passed 
her  lips,  the  like  of  it  I  never  heard ;  it  was  as  though 
she  had  lain  buried  under  a  hill  and  sought  to  move 
that  burthen.  And  the  next  moment  she  had  found 
a  sort  of  voice. 

"  'It  was  a  fight/  she  whispered.  'It  was  not — W 
and  she  paused  upon  the  word. 

"  'It  was  a  fair  fight  on  my  dear  master's  part/ 
said  I.  'As  for  the  other,  he  was  slain  in  the  very 
act  of  a  foul  stroke/ 

"  'Not  now !'  she  cried. 

"  'Madam/  said  I,  'hatred  of  that  man  glows  in 
my  bosom  like  a  burning  fire;  ay,  even  now  he  is 
dead.  God  knows,  I  would  have  stopped  the  fight- 
ing, had  I  dared.  It  is  my  shame  I  did  not.  But 
when  I  saw  him  fall,  if  I  could  have  spared  one 
thought  from  pitying  of  my  master,  it  had  been  to 
exult  in  that  deliverance/ 

"I  do  not  know  if  she  marked;  but  her  next  words 
were,  'My  lord  ?' 

"  'That  shall  be  my  part/  said  I. 

"  'You  will  not  speak  to  him  as  you  have  to  me  ?' 
she  asked. 

"  'Madam/  said  I,  'have  you  not  some  one  else 
to  think  of?    Leave  my  lord  to  me/ 

"  'Some  one  else?'  she  repeated. 

"  'Your  husband/  said  I.  She  looked  at  me  with 
a  countenance  illegible.  'Are  you  going  to  turn 
your  back  on  him?'  I  asked. 


220  STEVENSON 

"Still  she  looked  at  me;  then  her  hand  went  to 
her  heart  again.    'No/  said  she. 

"  'God  bless  you  for  that  word !'  I  said.  'Go  to 
him  now,  where  he  sits  in  the  hall ;  speak  to  him — it 
matters  not  what  you  say ;  give  him  your  hand ;  say, 
'I  know  all'; — if  God  gives  you  grace  enough,  say, 
'Forgive  me/ 

"  'God  strengthen  you,  and  make  you  merciful,' 
said  she.     'I  will  go  to  my  husband.' 

"  'Let  me  light  you  there/  said  I,  taking  up  the 
candle. 

"  'I  will  find  my  way  in  the  dark/  she  said,  with  a 
shudder,  and  I  think  the  shudder  was  at  me. 

"So  we  separated — she  downstairs  to  where  a 
little  light  glimmered  in  the  hall-door,  I  along  the 
passage  to  my  lord's  room.  It  seems  hard  to  say 
why,  but  I  could  not  burst  in  on  the  old  man  as  I 
could  on  the  young  woman;  with  whatever  reluct- 
ance, I  must  knock.  But  his  old  slumbers  were  light, 
or  perhaps  he  slept  not ;  and  at  the  first  summons  I 
was  bidden  enter. 

"He,  too,  sat  up  in  bed;  very  aged  and  bloodless 
he  looked;  and  whereas  he  had  a  certain  largeness 
of  appearance  when  dressed  for  daylight,  he  now 
seemed  frail  and  little,  and  his  face  (the  wig  being 
laid  aside)  not  bigger  than  a  child's.  This  daunted 
me ;  nor  less,  the  haggard  surmise  of  misfortune  in 
his  eye.  Yet  his  voice  was  even  peaceful  as  he  in- 
quired my  errand.  I  set  my  candle  down  upon  a 
chair,  leaned  on  the  bed- foot,  and  looked  at  him. 

"  'Lord  Durrisdeer/  said  I,  'it  is  very  well  known 
to  you  that  I  am  a  partisan  in  your  family/ 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    221 

"  'I  hope  we  are  none  of  us  partisans,'  said  he. 
'That  you  love  my  son  sincerely,  I  have  always  been 
glad  to  recognise.' 

"  'Oh !  my  lord,  we  are  past  the  hour  of  these 
civilities,'  I  replied.  'If  we  are  to  save  anything 
out  of  the  fire,  we  must  look  the  fact  in  its  bare 
countenance.  A  partisan  I  am;  partisans  we  have 
all  been;  it  is  as  a  partisan  that  I  am  here  in  the 
middle  of  the  night  to  plead  before  you.  Hear  me ; 
before  I  go,  I  will  tell  you  why.' 

"  'I  would  always  hear  you,  Mr.  Mackellar,'  said 
he,  'and  that  at  any  hour,  whether  of  the  day  or 
night,  for  I  would  be  always  sure  you  had  a  reason. 
You  spoke  once  before  to  very  proper  purpose;  I 
have  not  forgotten  that.' 

"  'I  am  here  to  plead  the  cause  of  my  master,'  I 
said.  'I  need  not  tell  you  how  he  acts.  You  know 
how  he  is  placed.  You  know  with  what  generosity 
he  has  always  met  your  other — met  your  wishes,'  I 
corrected  myself,  stumbling  at  that  name  of  son. 
'You  know — you  must  know — what  he  has  suffered 
— what  he  has  suffered  about  his  wife.' 

"  'Mr.  Mackellar !'  cried  my  lord,  rising  in  bed 
like  a  bearded  lion. 

"  'You  said  you  would  hear  me,'  I  continued. 
'What  you  do  not  know,  what  you  should  know, 
one  of  the  things  I  am  here  to  speak  of,  is  the  perse- 
cution he  must  bear  in  private.  Your  back  is  not 
turned  before  one  whom  I  dare  not  name  to  you 
falls  upon  him  with  the  most  unfeeling  taunts ;  twits 
him — pardon  me,  my  lord — twits  him  with  your 


222  STEVENSON 

partiality,  calls  him  Jacob,  calls  him  clown,  pursues 
him  with  ungenerous  raillery,  not  to  be  borne  by 
man.  And  let  but  one  of  you  appear,  instantly  he 
changes;  and  my  master  must  smile  and  courtesy 
to  the  man  who  has  been  feeding  him  with  insults ; 
I  know,  for  I  have  shared  in  some  of  it,  and  I  tell 
you  the  life  is  insupportable.  All  these  months  it 
has  endured;  it  began  with  the  man's  landing;  it 
was  by  the  name  of  Jacob  that  my  master  was 
greeted  the  first  night/ 

"My  lord  made  a  movement  as  if  to  throw  aside 
the  clothes  and  rise.  'If  there  be  any  truth  in  this — ' 
said  he. 

"  'Do  I  look  like  a  man  lying?'  I  interrupted, 
checking  him  with  my  hand. 

"  'You  should  have  told  me  at  first,'  he  said. 

"  'Ah,  my  lord !  indeed  I  should,  and  you  may 
well  hate  the  face  of  this  unfaithful  servant !'  I  cried. 

"  'I  will  take  order,'  said  he,  'at  once.'  And  again 
made  the  movement  to  rise. 

"Again  I  checked  him.  'I  have  not  done,'  said  I. 
'Would  God  I  had!  All  this  my  dear  unfortunate 
patron  has  endured  without  help  or  countenance. 
Your  own  best  word,  my  lord,  was  only  gratitude. 
Oh,  but  he  was  your  son,  too!  He  had  no  other 
father.  He  was  hated  in  the  country,  God  knows 
how  unjustly.  He  had  a  loveless  marriage.  He 
stood  on  all  hands  without  affection  or  support — 
dear,  generous,  ill-fated,  noble  heart!' 

"  'Your  tears  do  you  much  honour  and  me  much 
shame/  says  my  lord,  with  a  palsied  trembling.  'But 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    223 

you  do  me  some  injustice.  Henry  has  been  ever 
dear  to  me,  very  dear.  James  (I  do  not  deny  it,  Mr. 
Mackellar),  James  is  perhaps  dearer;  you  have  not 
seen  my  James  in  quite  a  favourable  light;  he  has 
suffered  under  his  misfortunes ;  and  we  can  only  re- 
member how  great  and  how  unmerited  these  were. 
And  even  now  his  is  the  more  affectionate  nature. 
But  I  will  not  speak  of  him.  All  that  you  say  of 
Henry  is  most  true;  I  do  not  wonder,  I  know  him 
to  be  very  magnanimous ;  you  will  say  I  trade  upon 
the  knowledge  ?  It  is  possible ;  there  are  dangerous 
virtues:  virtues  that  tempt  the  encroacher.  Mr. 
Mackellar,  I  will  make  it  up  to  him ;  I  will  take  order 
with  all  this.  I  have  been  weak ;  and,  what  is  worse, 
I  have  been  dull.' 

"  'I  must  not  hear  you  blame  yourself,  my  lord, 
with  that  which  I  have  yet  to  tell  upon  my  con- 
science/ I  replied.  'You  have  not  been  weak;  you 
have  been  abused  by  a  devilish  dissembler.  You 
saw  yourself  how  he  had  deceived  you  in  the  matter 
of  his  danger;  he  has  deceived  you  throughout  in 
every  step  of  his  career.  I  wish  to  pluck  him  from 
your  heart;  I  wish  to  force  your  eyes  upon  your 
other  son ;  ah,  you  have  a  son  there !' 

"  'No,  no/  said  he,  'two  sons — I  have  two  sons/ 

"I  made  some  gesture  of  despair  that  struck  him ; 
he  looked  at  me  with  a  changed  face.  'There  is 
much  worse  behind?'  he  asked,  his  voice  dying  as 
it  rose  upon  the  question. 

"  'Much  worse/  I  answered.  'This  night  he  said 
these  words  to  Mr.  Henry :    "I  have  never  known  a 


224  STEVENSON 

woman  who  did  not  prefer  me  to  you,  and  I  think 
who  did  not  continue  to  prefer  me."  ' 

"  'I  will  hear  nothing  against  my  daughter,'  he 
cried;  and  from  his  readiness  to  stop  me  in  this  di- 
rection, I  conclude  his  eyes  were  not  so  dull  as  I 
had  fancied,  and  he  had  looked  not  without  anxiety 
upon  the  siege  of  Mrs.  Henry. 

"  'I  think  not  of  blaming  her,'  cried  I.  'It  is  not 
that.  These  words  were  said  in  my  hearing  to  Mr. 
Henry;  and  if  you  find  them  not  yet  plain  enough, 
these  others  but  a  little  after :  "Your  wife  who  is  in 
love  with  me."  ' 

"  'They  have  quarrelled  ?'  he  said. 

"I  nodded. 

"  'I  must  fly  to  them/  he  said,  beginning  once 
again  to  leave  his  bed. 

"  'No,  no !'  I  cried,  holding  forth  my  hands. 

"  'You  do  not  know,'  said  he.  'These  are  danger- 
ous words/ 

"  'Will  nothing  make  you  understand,  my  lord  ?' 
said  I. 

"His  eyes  besought  me  for  the  truth. 

"I  flung  myself  on  my  knees  by  the  bedside.  'Oh, 
my  lord,'  cried  I,  'think  on  him  you  have  left;  think 
of  this  poor  sinner  whom  you  begot,  whom  your 
wife  bore  to  you,  whom  we  have  none  of  us  strength- 
ened as  we  could;  think  of  him,  not  of  yourself;  he 
is  the  other  sufferer — think  of  him!  That  is  the 
door  for  sorrow — Christ's  door,  God's  door :  oh !  it 
stands  open.  Think  of  him,  even  as  he  thought  of 
you.  "Who  is  to  tell  the  old  man?" — these  were  his 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    225 

words.  It  was  for  that  I  came;  that  is  why  I  am 
here  pleading  at  your  feet.' 

"  'Let  me  get  up,'  he  cried,  thrusting  me  aside, 
and  was  on  his  feet  before  myself.  His  voice  shook 
like  a  sail  in  the  wind,  yet  he  spoke  with  a  good 
loudness;  his  face  was  like  the  snow,  but  his  eyes 
were  steady  and  dry.  'Here  is  too  much  speech/ 
said  he.    'Where  was  it?' 

"  'In  the  shrubbery/  said  I. 

"  'And  Mr.  Henry?'  he  asked.  And  when  I  had 
told  him  he  knotted  his  old  face  in  thought. 

"  'And  Mr.  James?'  says  he: 

"  'I  have  left  him  lying,'  said  I,  'beside  the  can- 
dles/ 

"  'Candles  ?'  he  cried.  And  with  that  he  ran  to 
the  window,  opened  it,  and  looked  abroad.  'It 
might  be  spied  from  the  road/ 

"  'Where  none  goes  by  at  such  an  hour,'  I  ob- 
jected. 

"  'It  makes  no  matter/  he  said.  'One  might. 
Hark  P  cries  he.    'What  is  that  ?' 

"It  was  the  sound  of  men  very  guardedly  rowing 
in  the  bay ;  and  I  told  him  so. 

"  'The  freetraders/  said  my  lord.  'Run  at  once, 
Mackellar;  put  these  candles  out.  I  will  dress  in 
the  meanwhile ;  and  when  you  return  we  can  debate 
on  what  is  wisest.' 

"I  groped  my  way  downstairs,  and  out  at  the 
door.  From  quite  a  far  way  off  a  sheen  was  visible, 
making  points  of  brightness  in  the  shrubbery ;  in  so 
black  a  night  it  might  have  been  remarked  for  miles ; 


226  STEVENSON 

and  I  blamed  myself  bitterly  for  my  incaution.  How 
much  more  sharply  when  I  reached  the  place !  One 
of  the  candlesticks  was  overthrown,  and  that  taper 
quenched.  The  other  burned  steadily  by  itself,  and 
made  a  broad  space  of  light  upon  the  frosted  ground. 
All  within  that  circle  seemed,  by  the  force  of  con- 
trast and  the  overhanging  blackness,  brighter  than 
by  day.  And  there  was  the  bloodstain  in  the  midst ; 
and  a  little  farther  off  Mr.  Henry's  sword,  the  pom- 
mel of  which  was  of  silver;  but  of  the  body,  not  a 
trace.  My  heart  thumped  upon  my  ribs,  the  hair 
stirred  upon  my  scalp,  as  I  stood  there  staring — so 
strange  was  the  sight,  so  dire  the  fears  it  wakened. 
I  looked  right  and  left;  the  ground  was  so  hard, 
it  told  no  story.  I  stood  and  listened  till  my  ears 
ached,  but  the  night  was  hollow  about  me  like  an 
empty  church;  not  even  a  ripple  stirred  upon  the 
shore;  it  seemed  you  might  have  heard  a  pin  drop 
in  the  county. 

"I  put  the  candle  out,  and  the  blackness  fell  about 
me  groping  dark;  it  was  like  a  crowd  surrounding 
me;  and  I  went  back  to  the  house  of  Durrisdeer, 
with  my  chin  upon  my  shoulder,  startling,  as  I  went, 
with  craven  suppositions.  In  the  door  a  figure 
moved  to  meet  me,  and  I  had  near  screamed  with 
terror  ere  I  recognised  Mrs.  Henry. 

"  'Have  you  told  him  ?'  says  she. 

"  'It  was  he  who  sent  me,'  said  I.  'It's  gone.  But 
why  are  you  here  ?' 

"  'It  is  gone!'  she  repeated.    'What  is  gone?' 

"  'The  body,'  said  I.  'Why  are  you  not  with 
your  husband?' 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    227 

"  'Gone  ?'  said  she.  'You  cannot  have  looked. 
Come  back/ 

"  There  is  no  light  now,'  said  I.    'I  dare  not.' 

"'I  can  see  in  the  dark.  I  have  been  standing 
here  so  long — so  long,'  said  she.  'Come,  give  me 
your  hand.' 

"We  returned  to  the  shrubbery  hand  in  hand,  and 
to  the  fatal  place. 

"  'Take  care  of  the  blood,'  said  I. 

"  'Blood  ?'  she  cried,  and  started  violently  back. 

"  'I  suppose  it  will  be,'  said  I.  'I  am  like  a  blind 
man.' 

"  'No,'  said  she,  'nothing !  Have  you  not 
dreamed  ?' 

"  'Ah,  would  to  God  we  had !'  cried  I. 

"She  spied  the  sword,  picked  it  up,  and  seeing  the 
blood,  let  it  fall  again  with  her  hands  thrown  wide. 
'Ah !'  she  cried.  And  then,  with  an  instant  courage, 
handled  it  the  second  time,  and  [sought  to]  thrust  it 
to  the  hilt  into  the  frozen  ground.  'I  will  take  it  back 
and  clean  it  properly,'  says  she,  and  again  looked 
about  her  on  all  sides.  'It  cannot  be  that  he  was 
dead?'  she  added. 

"  'There  was  no  flutter  of  his  heart,'  said  I,  and 
then  remembering:  'Why  are  you  not  with  your 
husband  ?' 

"  'It  is  no  use,'  said  she ;  'he  will  not  speak  to  me.' 

"  'Not  speak  to  you  ?'  I  repeated.  'Oh !  you  have 
not  tried.' 

"  'You  have  a  right  to  doubt  me,'  she  replied, 
with  a  gentle  dignity. 


228  STEVENSON 

"At  this,  for  the  first  time,  I  was  seized  with  sor- 
row for  her.  'God  knows,  madam,'  I  cried,  'God 
knows  I  am  not  so  hard  as  I  appear ;  on  this  dreadful 
night  who  can  veneer  his  words?  But  I  am  a 
friend  to  all  who  are  not  Henry  Durie's  enemies.' 

"  'It  is  hard,  then,  you  should  hesitate  about  his 
wife,'  said  she. 

"I  saw  all  at  once,  like  the  rending  of  a  veil,  how 
nobly  she  had  borne  this  unnatural  calamity,  and 
how  generously  my  reproaches. 

"  'We  must  go  back  and  tell  this  to  my  lord,' 
said  I. 

"  'Him  I  cannot  face,'  she  cried. 

"  'You  will  find  him  the  least  moved  of  all  of  us/ 
said  I. 

"  'And  yet  I  cannot  face  him,'  said  she. 

"  'Well,'  said  I,  'you  can  return  to  Mr.  Henry ; 
I  will  see  my  lord.' 

"As  we  walked  back,  I  bearing  the  candlesticks, 
she  the  sword — a  strange  burthen  for  that  woman — 
she  had  another  thought.  'Should  we  tell  Henry?' 
she  asked. 

"  'Let  my  lord  decide,'  said  I. 

"My  lord  was  nearly  dressed  when  I  came  to  his 
chamber.  He  heard  me  with  a  frown.  'The  free- 
traders,' said  he.    'But  whether  dead  or  alive?' 

"  T  thought  him — '  said  I,  and  paused,  ashamed 
of  the  word. 

"  T  know ;  but  you  may  very  well  have  been  in 
error.  Why  should  they  remove  him  if  not  living?' 
he  asked,    'Oh  I  here  is  a  great  door  of  hope,    It 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    229 

must  be  given  out  that  he  departed — as  he  came — 
without  any  note  of  preparation.  We  must  save  all 
scandal/ 

"I  saw  he  had  fallen,  like  the  rest  of  us,  to  think 
mainly  of  the  house.  Now  that  all  the  living  mem- 
bers of  the  family  were  plunged  in  irremediable 
sorrow,  it  was  strange  how  we  turned  to  that  con- 
joint abstraction  of  the  family  itself,  and  sought  to 
bolster  up  the  airy  nothing  of  its  reputation:  not 
the  Duries  only,  but  the  hired  steward  himself. 

"  'Are  we  to  tell  Mr.  Henry?'  I  asked  him. 

"  'I  will  see/  said  he.  'I  am  going  first  to  visit 
him ;  then  I  go  forth  with  you  to  view  the  shrubbery 
and  consider/ 

"We  went  downstairs  into  the  hall.  Mr.  Henry 
sat  by  the  table  with  his  head  upon  his  hand,  like  a 
man  of  stone.  His  wife  stood  a  little  back  from 
him,  her  hand  at  her  mouth ;  it  was  plain  she  could 
not  move  him.  My  old  lord  walked  very  steadily 
to  where  his  son  was  sitting;  he  had  a  steady  coun- 
tenance, too,  but  methought  a  little  cold.  When  he 
was  come  quite  up,  he  held  out  both  his  hands  and 
said,  'My  son!' 

"With  a  broken,  strangled  cry,  Mr.  Henry  leaped 
up  and  fell  on  his  father's  neck,  crying  and  weeping, 
the  most  pitiful  sight  that  ever  a  man  witnessed, 
'Oh !  father,'  he  cried,  'you  know  I  loved  him ;  you 
know  I  loved  him  in  the  beginning;  I  could  have 
died  for  him — you  know  that !  I  would  have  given 
my  life  for  him  and  you.  Oh!  say  you  know  that. 
Oh!  say  you  can  forgive  me.     O  father,   father, 


230  STEVENSON 

what  have  I  done — what  have  I  done?  And  we 
used  to  be  bairns  together!'  and  wept  and  sobbed, 
and  fondled  the  old  man,  and  clutched  him  about 
the  neck,  with  the  passion  of  a  child  in  terror. 

"And  then  he  caught  sight  of  his  wife  (you  would 
have  thought  for  the  first  time),  where  she  stood 
weeping  to  hear  him,  and  in  a  moment  had  fallen 
at  her  knees.  'And  O  my  lass,'  he  cried,  'you  must 
forgive  me,  too!  Not  your  husband — I  have  only 
been  the  ruin  of  your  life.  But  you  knew  me  when 
I  was  a  lad;  there  was  no  harm  in  Henry  Durie 
then;  he  meant  aye  to  be  a  friend  to  you.  It's  him 
— it's  the  old  bairn  that  played  with  you — oh,  can 
ye  never,  never  forgive  him  ?' 

"Throughout  all  this  my  lord  was  like  a  cold, 
kind  spectator  with  his  wits  about  him.  At  the  first 
cry,  which  was  indeed  enough  to  call  the  house 
about  us,  he  had  said  to  me  over  his  shoulder,  'Close 
the  door.'    And  now  he  nodded  to  himself. 

"  'We  may  leave  him  to  his  wife  now,'  says  he. 
'Bring  a  light,  Mr.  Mackellar.' 

"Upon  my  going  forth  again  with  my  lord,  I  was 
aware  of  a  strange  phenomenon;  for  though  it  was 
quite  dark,  and  the  night  not  yet  old,  methought  I 
smelt  the  morning.  At  the  same  time  there  went 
a  tossing  through  the  branches  of  the  evergreens, 
so  that  they  sounded  like  a  quiet  sea,  and  the  air 
puffed  at  times  against  our  faces,  and  the  flame 
of  the  candle  shook.  We  made  the  more  speed,  I 
believe,  being  surrounded  by  this  bustle ;  visited  the 
scene  of  the  duel,  where  my  lord  looked  upon  the 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    231 

blood  with  stoicism;  and  passing  farther  on  to- 
ward the  landing-place,  came  at  last  upon  some  evi- 
dences of  the  truth.  For,  first  of  all,  where  there 
was  a  pool  across  the  path,  the  ice  had  been  trodden 
in,  plainly  by  more  than  one  man's  weight;  next, 
and  but  a  little  farther,  a  young  tree  was  broken, 
and  down  by  the  landing-place,  where  the  traders' 
boats  were  usually  beached,  another  stain  of  blood 
marked  where  the  body  must  have  been  infallibly 
set  down  to  rest  the  bearers. 

"This  stain  we  set  ourselves  to  wash  away  with 
the  sea  water,  carrying  it  in  my  lord's  hat;  and  as 
we  were  thus  engaged  there  came  up  a  sudden  moan- 
ing gust  and  left  us  instantly  benighted. 

"  'It  will  come  to  snow,'  says  my  lord ;  'and  the 
best  thing  that  we  could  hope.  Let  us  go  back  now ; 
we  can  do  nothing  in  the  dark.' 

"As  we  went  houseward,  the  wind  being  again 
subsided,  we  were  aware  of  a  strong  pattering  noise 
about  us  in  the  night ;  and  when  we  issued  from  the 
shelter  of  the  trees,  we  found  it  raining  smartly. 

"Throughout  the  whole  of  this,  my  lord's  clear- 
ness of  mind,  no  less  than  his  activity  of  body,  had 
not  ceased  to  minister  to  my  amazement.  He  set 
the  crown  upon  it  in  the  council  we  held  on  our 
return.  The  freetraders  had  certainly  secured  the 
Master,  though  whether  dead  or  alive  we  were  still 
left  to  our  conjectures ;  the  rain  would,  long  before 
day,  wipe  out  all  marks  of  the  transaction;  by  this 
we  must  profit.  The  Master  had  unexpectedly  come 
after  the  fall  of  night;  it  must  now  be  given  out 


232  STEVENSON 

he  had  as  suddenly  departed  before  the  break  of 
day;  and,  to  make  all  this  plausible,  it  now  only 
remained  for  me  to  mount  into  the  man's  chamber, 
and  pack  and  conceal  his  baggage.  True,  we  still 
lay  at  the  discretion  of  the  traders;  but  that  was  the 
incurable  weakness  of  our  guilt. 

"I  heard  him,  as  I  said,  with  wonder,  and  hastened 
to  obey.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Henry  were  gone  from  the 
hall;  my  lord,  for  warmth's  sake,  hurried  to  his 
bed;  there  was  still  no  sign  of  stir  among  the  serv- 
ants, and  as  I  went  up  the  tower  stair,  and  entered 
the  dead  man's  room,  a  horror  of  solitude  weighed 
upon  my  mind.  To  my  extreme  surprise,  it  was  all 
in  the  disorder  of  departure.  Of  his  three  port- 
manteaux, two  were  already  locked;  the  third  lay 
open  and  near  full.  At  once  there  flashed  upon  me 
some  suspicion  of  the  truth.  The  man  had  been 
going,  after  all;  he  had  but  waited  upon  Crail,  as 
Crail  waited  upon  the  wind;  early  in  the  night  the 
seamen  had  perceived  the  weather  changing;  the 
boat  had  come  to  give  notice  of  the  change  and  call 
the  passenger  aboard,  and  the  boat's  crew  had  stum- 
bled on  him  lying  in  his  blood.  Nay,  and  there  was 
more  behind.  This  prearranged  departure  shed 
some  light  upon  his  inconceivable  insult  of  the  night 
before;  it  was  a  parting  shot,  hatred  being  no  longer 
checked  by  policy.  And,  for  another  thing,  the  na- 
ture of  that  insult,  and  the  conduct  of  Mrs.  Henry, 
pointed  to  one  conclusion,  which  I  have  never  veri- 
fied, and  can  now  never  verify  until  the  great  as- 
size— the  conclusion  that  he  had  at  last  forgotten 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    233 

himself,  had  gone  too  far  in  his  advances,  and  had 
been  rebuffed.  It  can  never  be  verified,  as  I  say; 
but  as  I  thought  of  it  that  morning  among  his  bag- 
gage, the  thought  was  sweet  to  me  like  honey. 

"Into  the  open  portmanteau  I  dipped  a  little  ere 
I  closed  it.  The  most  beautiful  lace  and  linen,  many 
suits  of  those  fine  plain  clothes  in  which  he  loved 
to  appear;  a  book  or  two,  and  those  of  the  best, 
Caesar's  Commentaries,  a  volume  of  Mr.  Hobbes, 
the  Henriade  of  M.  de  Voltaire,  a  book  upon  the 
Indies,  one  on  the  mathematics,  far  beyond  where 
I  have  studied:  these  were  what  I  observed  with 
very  mingled  feelings.  But  in  the  open  portmanteau, 
no  papers  of  any  description.  This  set  me  musing. 
It  was  possible  the  man  was  dead;  but,  since  the 
traders  had  carried  him  away,  not  likely.  It  was 
possible  he  might  still  die  of  his  wound;  but  it  was 
also  possible  he  might  not.  And  in  this  latter  case 
I  was  determined  to  have  the  means  of  some  de- 
fence. 

"One  after  another  I  carried  his  portmanteaux  to 
a  loft  in  the  top  of  the  house  which  we  kept  locked; 
went  to  my  own  room  for  my  keys,  and,  returning 
to  the  loft,  had  the  gratification  to  find  two  that 
fitted  pretty  well.  In  one  of  the  portmanteaux  there 
was  a  shagreen  letter-case,  which  I  cut  open  with  my 
knife;  and  thenceforth  (so  far  as  any  credit  went) 
the  man  was  at  my  mercy.  Here  was  a  vast  deal 
of  gallant  correspondence,  chiefly  of  his  Paris  days; 
and,  what  was  more  to  the  purpose,  here  were  the 
copies  of  his  own  reports  to  the  English  Secretary, 


234  STEVENSON 

and  the  originals  of  the  Secretary's  answers :  a  most 
damning  series:  such  as  to  publish  would  be  to 
wreck  the  Master's  honour  and  to  set  a  price  upon 
his  life.  I  chuckled  to  myself  as  I  ran  through 
the  documents;  I  rubbed  my  hands,  I  sang  aloud 
in  my  glee.  Day  found  me  at  the  pleasing  task; 
nor  did  I  then  remit  my  diligence,  except  in  so  far 
as  I  went  to  the  window — looked  out  for  a  moment, 
to  see  the  frost  quite  gone,  the  world  turned  black 
again,  and  the  rain  and  the  wind  driving  in  the 
bay — and  to  assure  myself  that  the  lugger  was  gone 
from  its  anchorage,  and  the  Master  (whether  dead 
or  alive)  now  tumbling  on  the  Irish  Sea. 

"It  is  proper  I  should  add  in  this  place  the  very 
little  I  have  subsequently  angled  out  upon  the  doings 
of  that  night.  It  took  me  a  long  while  to  gather  it ; 
for  we  dared  not  openly  ask,  and  the  freetraders 
regarded  me  with  enmity,  if  not  with  scorn.  It  was 
near  six  months  before  we  even  knew  for  certain 
that  the  man  survived;  and  it  was  years  before  I 
learned  from  one  of  Crail's  men,  turned  publican 
on  his  ill-gotten  gain,  some  particulars  which  smack 
to  me  of  truth.  It  seems  the  traders  found  the 
Master  struggled  on  one  elbow,  and  now  staring 
round  him,  and  now  gazing  at  the  candle  or  at  his 
hand  which  was  all  bloodied,  like  a  man  stupid. 
Upon  their  coming,  he  would  seem  to  have  found 
his  mind,  bade  them  carry  him  aboard,  and  hold 
their  tongues;  and  on  the  captain  asking  how  he 
had  come  in  such  a  pickle,  replied  with  a  burst  of 
passionate  swearing,  and  incontinently  fainted.  They 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    235 

held  some  debate,  but  they  were  momently  looking 
for  a  wind,  they  were  highly  paid  to  smuggle  him 
to  France,  and  did  not  care  to  delay.  Besides  which, 
he  was  well  enough  liked  by  these  abominable 
wretches :  they  supposed  him  under  capital  sentence, 
knew  not  in  what  mischief  he  might  have  got  his 
wound,  and  judged  it  a  piece  of  good  nature  to 
remove  him  out  of  the  way  of  danger.  So  he  was 
taken  aboard,  recovered  on  the  passage  over,  and 
was  set  ashore  a  convalescent  at  the  Havre  de  Grace. 
What  is  truly  notable:  he  said  not  a  word  to  any 
one  of  the  duel,  and  not  a  trader  knows  to  this  day 
in  what  quarrel,  or  by  the  hand  of  what  adversary, 
he  fell.  With  any  other  man  I  should  have  set  this 
down  to  natural  decency;  with  him,  to  pride.  He 
could  not  bear  to  avow,  perhaps  even  to  himself, 
that  he  had  been  vanquished  by  one  whom  he  had 
so  much  insulted  and  whom  he  so  cruelly  despised/' 
— The  Master  of  Ballantrae. 

This  I  believe  to  be  the  finest  passage  in  Steven- 
son, but  beyond  this  and  certain  scenes  of  pictur- 
esque force,  we  look  vainly  for  any  comprehensive 
thought,  such  as  Victor  Hugo,  or  Dumas,  or  several 
of  our  present  romancers  display  in  the  management 
of  their  plot — "a  large  design,  shadowing  the  com- 
plexity of  that  game  of  consequences  to  which  we  all 
sit  down,  the  hanger-back  not  least."  Interrelating 
incident  and  character  throughout  a  long  story  was 
a  faculty  of  thought  very  frequently  denied  to  Ste- 
venson. He  sought  to  make  up  for  its  lack  by  vivid- 


236  STEVENSON 

ness  of  the  moment,  and  did  not  realize  that  of  the 
long  succession  of  moments  in  a  novel,  none  can 
have  its  proper  vividness  if  the  succession  points 
not  toward  a  fuller  clarity. 

It  is  possible  that  in  The  Master  a  great  novel  was 
spoiled  for  the  sake  of  dreaming  out  a  fantastic 
tale  of  "many  lands."  In  Her  mist  on  it  looks  as  if  a 
powerful  drama,  or  at  least  a  powerful  melodrama, 
might  have  been  worked  out  had  Stevenson  lived. 
Many  critics  see  in  the  book  signs  of  greater  genius 
than  elsewhere  in  Stevenson,  and  of  the  ambitious- 
ness  of  the  matter  there  is  no  question.  The 
crisis  of  the  story  was  to  be  the  trial  of  his  own 
son  Archie  for  murder  by  Weir  of  Hermiston,  the 
famous  "hanging  judge" — a  nightmare  situation  ob- 
viously, but  one  to  which  Stevenson's  powers  of 
dramatic  compression,  estimated  by  some  of  his 
short  stories,  and  by  scenes  between  the  two  Dur- 
risdeers  in  The  Master,  would  have  been  equal.  In 
preparation,  the  story  opens  with  a  vivid  narrative 
showing  the  temperamental  difference  between  the 
father  and  the  son.  This  theme,  which  played  so 
large  a  part  in  Stevenson's  own  life,  is  prominent  in 
several  of  his  other  tales,  appearing  in  The 
Wrecker,  "The  Story  of  a  Lie,"  and  "The  Adven- 
tures of  John  Nicholson";  but  in  Hermiston  alone 
is  it  seriously  treated.  Elsewhere  it  is  material  for 
farce;  and  whether  in  Hermiston  it  might  not  very 
probably  have  become  hyper-melodramatic  at  the 
end,  is  a  grave  question. 

There  is  some  good  reading  at  the  beginning  of 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    237 

the  novel,  where  the  "hanging  judge"  is  having  his 
portrait  drawn  for  us,  especially  that  scene,  in 
typical  sinister  humor,  in  which  the  judge's  servant, 
Kirstie,  goes  out  along  the  road  to  meet  him  with 
the  news  that  his  wife  has  just  died.  But  aside 
from  a  few  masterly  fragments  like  this,  the  char- 
acter of  the  judge,  who  is  to  play  such  a  terrible 
part  in  the  issue  of  the  story,  is  rather  thinly  made 
out.  He  fades  rather  than  looms  in  the  background, 
and,  by  the  sixtieth  page,  after  which  we  hear  no 
more  of  him  at  all,  he  is  already  a  mere  stock 
figure — religion,  drink,  dourness — typical  perhaps, 
but  also  a  parody. 

Shortly  begins  Archie's  flirtation  with  young 
Kirstie  which  is  to  cause  all  Archie's  trouble.  Sev- 
eral of  the  boy  and  girl  scenes  here  show  the  in- 
fluence of  Meredith,  and,  indeed,  the  book  might 
have  been  a  sort  of  Calvinistic,  dourly  melodra- 
matic Fever  el.  Stevenson  never  learned  the  art  of 
interweaving  skilfully,  as  Meredith  did,  the  various 
threads  of  his  story.  Some  sixty  pages  are  given 
up  to  the  flirtation  with  young  Kirstie  into  which 
no  further  development  of  the  first  motive,  of 
father  and  son,  enters.  Now  at  page  one  hundred 
twenty-seven,  Innes  arrives,  and  much  time  must 
be  devoted  to  the  character  of  Archie's  friend 
who  is  to  bring  the  plot  back  to  the  judge.  For 
Innes  is  obviously  the  young  seducer;  Kirtsie  will 
be  his  victim;  Archie  will  kill  him;  the  judge 
will  try  Archie.  Archie's  relations  with  Innes  are 
made   interesting  by  a  clever  bit  of  psychology. 


238  STEVENSON 

Archie  is  enough  like  his  father  that  his  treat- 
ment of  Innes  resembles  his  father's  treatment 
of  himself.  The  fragment  ends  with  a  neces- 
sary, but  utterly  mechanical,  alienation  scene  be- 
tween Archie  and  young  Kirstie.  The  tale  as  we 
have  it  is  only  a  fragment;  therefore  one  is  de- 
barred from  passing  any  conclusive  judgment  on 
the  management  of  the  plot,  and  the  seeming  fault 
of  totally  neglecting  the  chief  character,  Weir  of 
Hermiston  himself,  after  the  first  sixty  pages, 
might,  perhaps,  have  later  been  trammeled  up. 

Of  Stevenson's  romances,  Weir  of  Hermiston, 
like  St.  Ives,  was  not  finished,  and  The  Master  of 
Ballantrae  comes  by  its  particular  end  only  because 
the  author  happened  to  be  living  at  Saranac  when 
he  began  to  write  it  and  had  made  up  his  mind 
arbitrarily  that  it  should  somehow  end  in  that  lo- 
cality. These  books,  together  with  Prince  Otto  and 
The  Wrecker,  illustrate  the  flow  and  the  manifold 
possibilities  of  Stevenson's  imagination  and  also  his 
one  great  impossibility,  the  impossibility  of  con- 
ducting a  long  romance  to  a  fascinating,  inevitable 
end.  For  even  a  romance  may  very  well  have  such 
an  end,  and  in  so  far  outdo  the  dreams  of  sleep 
which  usually  cheat  us  of  this  satisfaction.  As  we 
have  already  observed,  Stevenson's  greatest  fault  as 
a  craftsman  is  that  he  was  all  his  life  the  prey  of 
hints  and  suggestions  rather  than  the  master  of  com- 
pleted ideas,  and  in  these  books  his  imagination  is 
too  often  of  the  over-impressionable  instead  of  the 
creative  type.    He  seems  to  have  been  much  like  a 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    239 

boy  starting  on  his  first  journey,  to  whom  expecta- 
tion is  the  keenest  part  of  the  pleasure,  and  who 
does  not  wish  many  instructions  about  how  he 
shall  proceed  for  fear  of  spoiling  the  fun  of  finding 
the  way  by  himself.  Obviously  in  regard  to  The 
Master,  Hermiston,  The  Wrecker,  and  Prince  Otto, 
there  was  no  detailed  plan  in  Stevenson's  mind  even 
when  he  was  half-way  through  the  story.  Incidents 
pile  up  in  the  wrong  places  and  block  progress,  cer- 
tain threads  are  quite  forgotten  or  picked  up  again 
only  at  random.  In  Prince  Otto,  the  peasant  and 
Ottilia  are  let  lie,  though  excellent  figures  to  re- 
turn to,  and  the  Prince  might  perfectly  well  have 
gone  back  to  them  for  some  sort  of  finale  when  he 
left  the  court.  Captain  Trent,  in  The  Wrecker,  a 
central  figure  in  the  main  plot,  is  utterly  neglected 
for  two  hundred  pages  at  the  end.  This  is  the  flim- 
siness  and  not  the  fitness  of  romance. 

This  general  wandering  geography  of  so  many  of 
Stevenson's  plots  is  a  direct  reflection  of  his  own 
existence.  He  himself  doubtless  found  it  as  inter- 
esting to  wander  in  fiction  as  in  the  geography  of 
life,  and  to  find  himself,  driven  hither  and  thither 
by  no  inevitable  agencies,  winding  up  his  tale  where 
he,  the  author,  happened  at  the  moment  to  be.  And 
I  am,  of  course,  aware  that  such  whimsicality  is  the 
trait  supposed  to  appeal  most  to  any  reader  of  a 
true  romantical  and  roving  fancy;  but  whimsicality 
was  intended  in  but  one  of  these  books.  In  all  but 
The  Wrecker  Stevenson  was  trying  to  write  well- 
constructed  romance,  untinged  by  farce,  and  the 


240  STEVENSON 

farce  creeps  in  in  spite  of  him,  or  perhaps,  rather, 
because  it  was  an  inevitable  part  of  his  own  nature. 
In  a  medley  like  The  Wrecker  the  element  of 
farce  is  intentionally  predominant.  Romance  oc- 
cupies the  two  hundred  pages  in  the  middle  of  the 
book;  the  other  three  hundred  and  fifty  being  a 
series  of  elaborate  burlesques  on  the  detective  story, 
on  methods  of  American  advertising,  on  English 
family  pride,  on  the  man  of  the  world,  or  on  any 
matter  that  happened  to  float  into  the  writer's  imagi- 
nation. In  The  Wrecker  the  gleeful  irresponsi- 
bility of  Stevensonian  humor  outstrips  any  possi- 
ble attempt  at  serious  criticism.  It  is  all  very  cheap 
nonsense  or  all  very  good  fun,  as  you  happen  to 
feel  at  the  moment.  If  the  story  had  a  romantic 
purpose  in  its  inception — the  first  ten  pages  have 
a  ring  that  echoes  in  the  ear — this  is  abruptly 
forgotten  till,  on  nearing  page  two  hundred,  the 
phantom  plot,  which  you  may  have  been  vainly  pur- 
suing from  the  Latin  Quarter  to  California,  again 
turns  up.  For  two  hundred  pages  there  is  a  stirring 
sea  adventure  with  a  magnificent  storm  and  a  guano 
island,  largely  done  by  Lloyd  Osbourne,  and  other 
matters  full  of  unequaled  terror.  Toward  page  four 
hundred  this  again  fizzles  out  and  the  farce  resumes 
full  sway.  Few  readers  can  have  a  grain  of  com- 
mon sense  left  at  the  end  of  this  amazing  tale,  and 
certainly  the  authors,  if  one  should  take  them  in 
earnest,  are  guilty  of  having  but  the  haziest  notion 
from  chapter  to  chapter  of  what  they  were  intending 
to  do  or,  at  the  end,  of  what  they  had  done. 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    241 

In  the  Epilogue  to  Will  Lowe,  the  authors  make 
a  defense  of  the  structure  of  this  "modern"  yarn, 
"full  of  details  of  our  barbaric  manners  and  un- 
stable morals; — full  of  the  need  and  the  lust  of 
money,  so  that  there  is  scarce  a  page  in  which  the 
dollars  do  not  jingle; — full  of  the  unrest  and  move- 
ment of  our  century,  so  that  the  reader  is  hurried 
from  place  to  place  and  sea  to  sea,  and  the  book  is 
less  a  romance  than  a  panorama; — in  the  end,  as 
blood-bespattered  as  an  epic."  The  authors  hoped 
that  this  panoramic  structure  would  produce  a  new 
illusion  of  reality;  but  it  does  not  work  out  that  way 
for  most  readers.  "Hurried  from  place  to  place  and 
sea  to  sea,"  the  mind  of  the  reader  can  no  more 
receive  an  impression  of  reality  than  in  the  vagaries 
of  a  fantastic  dream;  and  as  for  the  "tone  of  a  novel 
of  manners  and  experience,"  in  which  the  authors 
assert  their  epic  starts,  who  could  be  beguiled  so 
far?  The  Wrecker  is  a  commentary  on  Stevenson's 
other  books.  Its  ground  for  success  is  the  humorous 
emphasis  of  the  very  traits  which  elsewhere  mar  his 
serious  efforts — the  dislocations,  the  arbitrary  ar- 
rangement of  scenes,  the  lack  of  foresight.  Here, 
they  are  a  part  of  the  fun.  They  actually  carry  us 
along. 

Besides  The  Wrecker,  there  is  Prince  Otto,  The 
Dynamiter,  and  The  New  Arabian  Nights,  of  one 
imagination  all  compact — romance,  satire,  farce,  al- 
most indistinguishably  mingled. 

Prince  Otto,  a  rather  spiritless  tour  de  force  con- 
taining two  or  three  amusing  puppets  endowed  with 


242  STEVENSON 

a  lingo,  unquestionably  has  the  germ  of  an  idea  in  it. 
Stevenson  intended  to  create  a  mock-government, 
a  mirror  for  politicians,  and  a  guide  to  vanity  for 
all  serious  souls.  In  the  principality  of  Grunewald, 
Otto,  a  hesitating  socialist,  can  alone  see  things  in 
proportion.  He  has  had  a  glimpse  of  the  world  and 
has  heard  the  laughter  of  the  people.  The  rest  of 
his  ridiculous  court  are  puppets  on  the  wires  of  illu- 
sion. But,  much  like  Hamlet,  he  is  full  of  the  vani- 
ties himself.  That  is  why  he  understands  them  so 
well,  and  why  he  enjoys  life  like  a  play  and  is 
incapable  of  grasping  the  wand  that  would  destroy 
the  spell.  It  has  often  been  said  that  Stevenson  has 
described  himself,  or  a  mixture  of  himself  and  his 
cousin  Bob,  in  Otto.  The  character  possibly  has 
that  curious  interest  for  some  readers;  but  Otto 
does  not  fill  the  tale  with  reality  as  the  character 
of  Jim  Hawkins  and  that  of  Alan  Breck  fill  their 
respective  extravaganzas.  If  the  fantastic  Prince 
is  Stevenson,  then  Stevenson  is  nothing  but  a  trick 
of  styles.  For  surely  Otto,  no  more  than  Seraphina 
or  Madame  von  Rosen,  walks  in  the  story;  he  is  a 
figment  suitable  only  for  a  kind  of  false  fairy-land. 
In  spite  of  what  Stevenson  says  in  the  dedication 
about  General  Braddock,  when  defeated  in  America, 
promising  himself  to  do  better  next  time,  the  book 
is  not  one  of  the  author's  brave  efforts. 

To  mix  successfully  romance,  melodrama,  farce, 
and  satire  is  by  no  means  an  impossible  feat  when 
not  too  seriously  undertaken.  A  great  many  of 
Stevenson's  intimate  friends  were  of  the  opinion 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    243 

that  he  accomplished  it  essentially  in  his  own  per- 
sonality. Indeed  most  of  the  character  sketches  in 
Mr.  Hammerton's  volume  of  Stevensoniana  lead 
one  to  this  view  of  the  novelist's  eccentric  and  vastly 
entertaining  nature.    His  was  a  rare  blend — 

"A  brilliant  and  romantic  grace, 
A  spirit  intense  and  rare,  with  trace  on  trace 
Of  passion,  impudence,  and  energy. 
Valiant  in  velvet,  light  in  ragged  luck, 
Most  vain,  most  generous,  sternly  critical, 
Buffoon  and  poet,  lover  and  sensualist: 
A  deal  of  Ariel,  just  a  streak  of  Puck, 
Much  Antony,  of  Hamlet  most  of  all, 
And  something  of  the  Shorter-Catechist.,, 

So  his  friend  Henley  has  described  him,  and 
somewhere,  surely,  he  has  himself  put  this  mixture 
into  fiction  without  forcing,  without  loss  of  humor. 
There  are  three  places  where  I  think  you  will  find  it. 
They  do  not  represent  Stevenson  at  his  literary  best, 
but  perhaps  they  do  represent  his  personal  humor 
most  truly.  The  stories  of  Desprez  in  "The  Treas- 
ure of  Franchard,',  of  Challoner  and  Sommerset  in 
The  Dynamiter,  and  of  Prince  Florizel  in  The  New 
Arabian  Nights  are  masterpieces  of  this  composite 
character.  They  are  Henley's  old,  intrepid,  scornful 
Stevenson;  they  are  Stevenson  of  Barbizon  days 
with  Bob,  as  his  wife  has  described  him,  not  belong- 
ing quite  to  his  own  century,  and  differing  in  some 
indefinable  way  both  in  appearance  and  character 
from  the  majority  of  mankind;  they  are  the  talka- 


244  STEVENSON 

tive  boisterous  Stevenson,  full  of  the  lightest  fancy 
and  full  of  the  most  farcical  fun.  They  are  things 
to  be  read  with  a  gleaming  eye  and  a  grin,  for  they 
contain  the  essence  of  Stevenson's  bravado,  of  ad- 
venture for  adventure's  sake  and  folly  for  pure 
foolishness. 

As  you  read  about  The  Suicide  Club,  you  can  not 
suppress  your  nervous  excitement,  nor  can  you  stop 
laughing  hilariously.  You  are  forced  to  adopt  the 
Stevensonian  manner  and  carry  the  thing  off  lightly. 
This  is  not  Henley's  "artist  in  morals,"  the  "very 
nearly  faultless  monster,"  the  "Seraph  in  Choco- 
late," but  rather  the  "buffoon  and  poet." 

Yet  if  this  is  the  Stevenson  whom  Henley  re- 
gretted to  have  lost,  and  whom  all  the  more  intimate 
of  his  critics  seemed  to  have  chiefly  delighted  in, 
it  is  not  the  Stevenson  whom  the  next  generation 
has  accepted.  For  them  Stevenson  as  a  writer  of 
fiction  is  always  one  of  two  people.  He  is  the 
magician  with  the  golden  key  to  the  palace  of  dreams 
in  Treasure  Island  and  in  Kidnapped,  or  he  is  the 
romantic  moralist  whom  Henley  repudiates,  the 
author  of  Dr.  Jekyll,  The  Ebb-tide,  and  "The  Isle 
of  Voices."  And  I  feel  sure  that  the  next  genera- 
tion is  right.  These  are  the  original  and  durable 
parts  of  Stevenson.  Farce  and  satire  have  been 
better  done  from  Swift  to  Chesterton  than  Steven- 
son could  do  them ;  and  Joseph  Conrad  and  Maurice 
Hewlett  have  succeeded  with  the  long  romance 
where  Stevenson  failed  for  lack  of  thoughts  or  a 
good  spy-glass.     After  so  long  a  chapter,  it  is  pos- 


ROMANCE,  MELODRAMA,  FARCE    245 

sibly  disheartening  to  come  to  this  conclusion — 
Treasure  Island  and  Kidnapped  out  of  them  all,  to 
which  some  would  add  The  Master,  and  to  which 
we  would  all  supply  many  favorite  scenes  from  the 
other  books. 

These  novels  of  Stevenson,  taken  all  together, 
present  a  curious  array — curious  rather  than  im- 
pressive. The  ten  volumes  on  my  shelves  do  not 
bid  for  comparison  with  any  ten  volumes  of  Scott, 
or  Victor  Hugo,  or  Dumas,  or  Conrad,  in  so  far 
as  they  stand  for  adventure  in  the  land  of  fancy, 
or  in  so  far  as  they  attempt  a  picture  of  society. 
They  do  not  seem  to  encompass  the  region  marked 
for  exploration  as  those  other  volumes  encompass 
it — Rob  Roy,  Ninety-Three,  The  Black  Tulip,  Nos- 
tromo,  and  the  rest.  These  are  the  products  of  ma- 
ture imaginations,  and  though  Stevenson's  imagina- 
tion surpasses  each  of  them  in  some  respects,  it  is 
not  as  evenly  extensive,  it  is  not  nearly  so  capable 
of  filling  out  the  expectations  it  arouses.  Steven- 
son's imagination  is  suggestive,  but  not  far-sighted. 
On  the  other  hand,  as  one  looks  at  this  set  of  vol- 
umes, it  brings  memories  of  many  marvelous  shores 
and  of  mountain  tops  where  Fancy  has  her  abode, 
memories  of  supreme  moments. 


CHAPTER  XI 


THE  MORAL  FABLES 


STEVENSON  has  the  peculiar  distinction  of 
being  a  man  of  three  books.  At  the  mention 
of  his  name,  it  is  not  Treasure  Island  alone  or  Vir- 
ginibus  Puerisque  alone,  that  comes  instantly  to 
mind;  but  Treasure  Island,  Virginibus  Puerisque, 
and  Dr.  Jekyll.  This  is  a  peculiar  distinction,  be- 
cause few  authors  are  finally  thought  of  with  equal 
reference  to  three  phases  of  their  art.  At  the  name 
of  Thackeray  the  world  answers  Vanity  Fair  or 
Esmond  or  Pendennis,  which  are,  after  all,  one  and 
the  same  thing.  If  you  say  Dickens,  the  world  an- 
nounces a  confusion  of  favorites  which  are  all  very 
closely  related  to  one  another.  Pickwick,  Oliver 
Twist,  Copper  field,  A  Christmas  Carol,  are  of  one 
family;  and  even  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities  is  a  first 
cousin.  George  Meredith  is  the  author  of  a  great 
variety  of  novels,  some  remarkable  poetry,  and  a 
few  essays,  all  of  which  are  conceived,  as  it  were, 
from  the  same  side  of  his  mind — or  better,  in  his 
whole  mind,  which  is  characterized  by  its  strong 

246 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  247 

marking  unity  rather  than  by  its  entertaining  versa- 
tility. A  similar  statement  might  be  made  concern- 
ing George  Eliot  or  Thomas  Hardy;  and  though 
Stevenson's  mind  has  as  well  its  marking  unity, 
which  I  shall  be  at  pains  to  point  out,  it  is  given  to  a 
more  divergent  variety  of  forms  than  is  the  case 
with  these  other  writers. 

From  such  considerations  one  should,  however, 
beware  of  drawing  a  rule,  of  supposing  that  typical 
unity  is  a  characteristic  of  the  greater  writers  and 
that  versatility  is  a  characteristic  of  the  less  great. 
Schiller,  Goethe,  and  Victor  Hugo  occur  to  one  in- 
stantly as  examples  of  versatile  greatness;  while  on 
the  other  hand  of  second  rate  monotony  are  the 
examples  of  Charles  Reade,  Lever,  and  Marry  at. 
But  the  whole  matter,  the  rule  and  its  exceptions, 
makes  a  comment  to  be  emphasized.  The  fact  that 
the  first  examples  of  versatile  greatness  which  come 
to  mind  are  apt  to  be  Frenchmen  or  Germans  rather 
than  Englishmen,  is  worth  noting.  It  leads  us  to 
reflect  that  Stevenson  is  one  of  the  very  few  British 
authors  of  marked  versatility  who  ranks  well  up 
in  the  scale — and  it  is  perhaps  to  be  recollected  that 
he  is  a  thorough  Scot.  Stevenson's  essays  place 
him  beside  Hazlitt  and  Lamb.  His  two  or  three  suc- 
cessful romances  are  the  classics  of  boyhood.  His 
moral  fables  are  in  a  realm  of  imagination,  where 
he  is  alone  in  English  letters.  In  so  excellent  a 
variety  of  criticisms,  popular  philosophy,  short 
stories,  romances,  fables,  and  poetry,  you  will  not 
find  anybody  in  modern  England  to  compare  with 


248  STEVENSON 

him,  or  hardly  in  Europe.  But  it  is  to  such  men  as 
Anatole  France,  Jules  Lemaitre,  Hauptmann,  and 
Bjornsen  that  one  turns  for  any  similar  excellence 
of  variety  among  contemporary  writers. 

A  peculiar  pliancy  of  mood  which,  in  his  weaker 
moments,  is  almost  that  of  the  impersonator,  and 
which,  in  his  stronger  moments,  thoroughly  cor- 
responds to  his  own  virile  complexity,  is  the  Ste- 
vensonian  trait — three  men  or  more  in  one.  His 
works  testify  to  it,  and,  as  it  appeared  in  daily  inter- 
course, his  friends  never  tired  of  remarking  on  it. 
Once  while  reading  Don  Quixote,  Stevenson  jumped 
to  his  feet  and  exclaimed  that  the  book  must  have 
been  written  especially  for  him.  Many  of  us  per- 
ceive ourselves  in  that  extravaganza;  but  I  do  not 
know  that  many  people  have  so  good  a  right  as 
Stevenson  to  be  overcome  with  the  exactness  of 
the  characterization. 


II 


So  I  believe  that,  in  a  not  too  literal  sense,  it  is 
typical  of  Stevenson's  genius  that  it  should  make 
its  first  wide  appeal  in  a  fable  of  multiple  personal- 
ity, Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde.  Stevenson's  relation 
to  this  amazing  tale  has  very  usually  been  misunder- 
stood. To  many  people  the  plot  seems  a  sheer  tour 
de  force,  or  else  the  sort  of  thing  that  pops  into  a 
man's  brain  for  no  personal  reason  at  all.  That 
is,  such  people  pretend  that  the  conception  is  of 
the  sort  which  does  not  belong  naturally  here  rather 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  249 

than  there  in  the  human  mind,  and  imagine  that 
some  other  writer  might  have  developed  it  had  it 
occurred  to  him.  That  it  was  first  suggested  to 
Stevenson  in  a  dream  is  cited  as  argument  in  this 
view  of  the  case.  On  the  contrary  Dr.  Jekyll  is  one 
of  Stevenson's  most  characteristic  and  intimate  pro- 
ductions; and  his  dreaming  the  plot  shows  that  it 
was  especially  personal,  for  in  one  sense,  surely,  a 
dream  is  the  very  essence  of  spontaneity.  Besides 
this,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Stevenson  was  in- 
tensely interested  in  what  he  calls  the  different  men 
in  us.  He  had  already  written  "Markheim,"  a  fable 
about  the  better  self.  Such  subjects  were  matters 
of  frequent  conversation  with  him;  and  the  sug- 
gestion of  this  particular  dream  of  the  Jekyll-Hyde 
transformation  was  all  he  needed  to  start  him  on 
a  fresh  illustration  of  the  general  thesis. 

In  the  "Chapter  on  Dreams,"  while  whimsically 
explaining  his  theory,  already  referred  to,  of  the 
part  which  the  subconsciousness  plays  in  artistic 
production,  he  illustrates  that  theory  by  specific 
reference  to  Dr.  Jekyll.  He  says  he  had  long  been 
trying  to  write  a  story  on  this  subject  of  dual  per- 
sonality, and,  after  going  about  racking  his  brains 
for  a  plot,  dreamed  one  night  the  scene  of  Jekyll 
at  the  window,  and  also  a  scene  in  which  Hyde  took 
the  powder  and  underwent  transformation  in  the 
presence  of  those  pursuing  him.  All  the  rest  of  the 
tale  he  invented  while  awake,  "although  I  think  I 
can  trace  in  much  of  it  the  manner  of  my  Brownies." 
Thus  the  meaning  of  the  tale  is  his,  and  "the  cen- 


250  STEVENSON 

tral  idea  of  a  voluntary  change  becoming  involun- 
tary." But  "the  business  of  the  powders,  which 
so  many  have  censured,  is,  I  am  relieved  to  say,  not 
mine  at  all  but  the  Brownies'." 

On  the  morning  after  Stevenson  had  this  dream 
he  started  afresh  on  the  tale  and  finished  the  first 
draft  of  thirty  thousand  words  in  three  days.  But 
in  this,  it  appeared  to  his  wife  that  he  had  not  made 
the  allegory  clear,  and  he  therefore  rewrote  it  com- 
pletely from  a  different  point  of  view — a  point  of 
view  that  enabled  him  to  see  the  mystery  as  a  moral, 
and  to  make  the  moral  the  explanation  of  the  mys- 
tery. This  is  the  obvious  secret  and  the  hidden 
significance  of  the  tale. 

A  great  mystery  story  must  mean  something  be- 
sides an  exhibition  of  detective  skill  in  exposing  the 
mystery.  It  must  mean  something  more  than  the 
opposition  of  strange  characters  and  strange  forces. 
Poe's  tales,  which  are  marvels  of  cleverness  in 
creating  the  atmosphere,  the  rhythms,  of  strange- 
ness, seek  few  meanings  beyond  those  of  nervous 
sensation;  and  a  Poe  tale  with  a  moral  would  be 
an  artistic  contradiction.  But  the  great  mystery 
plot  must  have,  besides  an  atmosphere  of  ominous- 
ness  and  besides  details  of  action  which  peculiarly 
haunt  the  mind,  an  imaginative  analysis  to  increase 
interest  in  the  intellectual  aspect  of  the  plot  and  to 
guide  the  reader  toward  the  mystery  of  its  inner 
meaning.  This  mystery  must  reside  actually  in  the 
plot  and  not  be  finally  discovered  to  have  evaporated 
in  the  "atmosphere."   The  meaning,  the  moral,  and 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  251 

the  mystery  must  be  one  and  the  same;  and  yet 
an  explanation  of  the  mystery  must  in  nowise  dis- 
pel the  atmosphere  of  mystery. 

What  then  is  the  moral  of  Dr.  Jekyllf  Let  us 
begin  with  the  most  obvious  aspect  of  "the  strange 
case."  There  are,  says  Stevenson,  two  men  in  us, 
a  better  and  a  worse,  who  find  it  convenience  or 
policy,  if  permitted,  to  play  two  roles.  So  long  as 
the  two  men  are  kept  distinct,  each  recognizing 
clearly  which  is  which,  moral  corruption  is  not  in- 
evitable. But  in  some  natures  a  point  is  reached 
sooner  than  is  suspected  where  the  better  man  finds 
himself  automatically  turning  into  the  worse  and 
this  when  he  least  of  all  desires  it,  when  policy  and 
convenience  are  directly  against  it.  His  nature,  be- 
cause it  is  double,  slips  from  his  single  control. 
The  man  who  allows  the  two  sides  of  his  nature  to 
develop  at  will  and  who  hopes  to  keep  them  apart, 
is  soon  forced  ironically  to  use  his  better  side  merely 
as  a  shield  for  his  worse  side.  That  is,  he  becomes 
a  hypocrite. 

Now  this  moral  plot  of  Dr.  Jekyll  is  not  extrane- 
ous to  the  narrative.  It  is  not  a  tag  at  the  end.  For 
example,  long  before  you  have  at  all  guessed  what 
the  relation  between  Jekyll  and  Hyde  may  be,  you 
are  led  to  believe  by  the  circumstantial  evidence  that 
Jekyll  is  in  Hyde's  power,  or  that  he  is  at  least 
persecuted  by  Hyde.  This  turns  out  to  be  exactly 
the  truth  in  the  moral  plot,  though  in  the  narrative 
plot  it  is  true  only  in  a  new  way  that  you  never 
suspected.     Next  door  to  a  right  guess,  you  are 


252  STEVENSON 

still  as  far  as  ever  from  sensing  the  real  state  of 
affairs,  and  you  are  also  just  in  the  position  that 
Jekyll  himself  hoped  to  be. 

Again,  the  peculiar  revulsion  of  feeling  that  char- 
acterizes every  meeting  between  Hyde  and  an  or- 
dinary man,  the  "haunting  sense  of  unexpressed 
deformity,"  which  the  reader  at  first  takes  to  be 
only  a  part  of  the  atmosphere,  is  finally  seen  to 
have  been  part  of  the  moral  plot.  Lanyon  dies 
mysteriously.  Why?  Because  the  evil  of  this  man 
Hyde  is  contagious.  Lanyon  dies  of  Hyde's  Evil. 
The  fact  is  a  haunting  detail  of  the  narrative  plot, 
and  its  peculiar  significance  is  a  more  fearfully 
haunting  suggestion  in  the  moral  plot. 

The  two  strains  of  the  fable  are  so  perfectly  in- 
terwoven that  at  last  there  is  a  very  peculiar  and 
unusual  effect.  In  most  stories  of  terror  the  solu- 
tion comes  as  a  distinct  relief.  It  explains  away 
much  of  the  terror.  But  here  the  explanation,  the 
final  sense  of  the  moral  meaning,  throws  back  over 
many  a  half- forgotten  detail  of  the  narrative  plot 
a  light  so  sharp  and  terrible  that  the  reader  at  once 
begins  to  contemplate  the  whole  with  fresh  amaze- 
ment and  increasing  awe.  It  is  this  which  really 
makes  the  story  a  great  story  and  not  one  where  the 
art  of  the  thing,  the  trick,  becomes  obvious  and 
stale  as  the  mind  dwells  on  it. 

A  definite,  though  paradoxical  proof  of  the  sound- 
ness of  the  art  of  this  story  is  the  stark  simplicity 
of  those  scenes  which  most  stir  the  reader.    We  are 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  253 

doubtless  impressionable  beings ;  but  I  can  still  recall 
the  thrills  that  first  stole  up  my  back  as  Mr.  Enfield, 
on  the  fourth  page  of  the  tale,  pointed  across  the 
street  with  his  cane,  and,  as  I  now  read,  the  same 
thrills  return. 

"'Did  you  ever  remark  that  door?'  he  asked; 
and  when  his  companion  had  replied  in  the  affirma- 
tive, 'It  is  connected  in  my  mind/  he  added,  'with 
a  very  odd  story.' 

"'Indeed?'  said  Mr.  Utterson,  with  a  slight 
change  of  voice,  'and  what  was  that?'  " 

That  "slight  change  of  voice"  spreads  mystery 
for  miles  around.  At  just  that  point,  before  the 
reader  knows  anything  at  all,  it  is  a  stroke  of 
genius. 

The  most  famous  spot  is  probably  the  scene  at 
the  window,  a  window  in  a  court  of  this  same 
house.  Mr.  Enfield  and  Mr.  Utterson  are  again 
on  one  of  their  rambles. 

"The  court  was  very  cool  and  a  little  damp,  and 
full  of  premature  twilight,  although  the  sky,  high 
up  overhead,  was  still  bright  with  sunset.  The 
middle  one  of  the  three  windows  was  half-way  open ; 
and  sitting  close  beside  it,  taking  the  air  with  an 
infinite  sadness  of  mien,  like  some  disconsolate 
prisoner,  Utterson  saw  Dr.  Jekyll. 

"'What!  Jekyll!'  he  cried:  T  trust  you  are 
better.' 


254  STEVENSON 

"  'I  am  very  low,  Utterson/  replied  the  doctor, 
drearily,  Very  low.  It  will  not  last  long,  thank 
God/ 

"  'You  stay  too  much  indoors,*  said  the  lawyer. 
'You  should  be  out,  whipping  up  the  circulation 
like  Mr.  Enfield  and  me.  (This  is  my  cousin — Mr. 
Enfield — Dr.  Jekyll.)  Come  now;  get  your  hat  and 
take  a  quick  turn  with  us.' 

"  'You  are  very  good/  sighed  the  other.  'I  should 
like  to  very  much;  but  no,  no,  no,  it  is  quite  im- 
possible; I  dare  not.  But  indeed,  Utterson,  I  am 
very  glad  to  see  you ;  this  is  really  a  great  pleasure ; 
I  would  ask  you  and  Mr.  Enfield  up,  but  the  place 
is  really  not  fit/ 

"  'Why,  then,'  said  the  lawyer,  good-naturedly, 
'the  best  thing  we  can  do  is  to  stay  down  here  and 
speak  with  you  from  where  we  are/ 

"  'That  is  just  what  I  was  about  to  venture  to 
propose/  returned  the  doctor  with  a  smile.  But 
the  words  were  hardly  uttered,  before  the  smile 
was  struck  out  of  his  face  and  succeeded  by  an  ex- 
pression of  such  abject  terror  and  despair,  as  froze 
the  very  blood  of  the  two  gentlemen  below.  They 
saw  it  but  for  a  glimpse,  for  the  window  was  in- 
stantly thrust  down;  but  that  glimpse  had  been 
sufficient,  and  they  turned  and  left  the  court  with- 
out a  word.  In  silence,  too,  they  traversed  the  by- 
streets; and  it  was  not  until  they  had  come  into  a 
neighbouring  thoroughfare,  where  even  upon  a  Sun- 
day there  were  still  some  stirrings  of  life,  that  Mr. 
Utterson  at  last  turned  and  looked  at  his  companion. 


THE   MORAL   FABLES  255 

They  were  both  pale;  and  there  was  an  answering 
horror  in  their  eyes. 

"  'God  forgive  us,  God  forgive  us,'  said  Mr.  Ut- 
terson. 

"But  Mr.  Enfield  only  nodded  his  head  very  seri- 
ously, and  walked  on  once  more  in  silence." — Dr. 
Jekyll. 

Surely,  this  is  not  the  dime  novel  method  of 
trumping  up  excitement.  As  one  comes  to  this 
scene  in  the  narrative,  full  of  the  most  terrible  suspi- 
cions, one  feels  an  almost  unbearable  horror,  be- 
side which  the  excitements  of  cheap  literature  are 
merely  things  to  be  bought  with  money  over  a 
counter. 


Ill 


The  publication  of  this  story  in  1886  changed 
Stevenson's  reputation  from  that  of  a  writer  of 
philosophic  sketches  and  a  graceful  contributor  to 
magazines  to  that  of  the  inventor  of  an  idea  and  a 
man  of  artistic  force.  The  book  established  him 
internationally.  It  was  soon  translated  into  many 
European  languages.  It  was  dramatized.  Sermons 
were  preached  about  it.  The  title  was  on  every- 
body's tongue,  and  has  since  passed  into  the  lan- 
guage. And  a  coincidence,  which  I  think  marks  the 
crest  of  popular  literary  fame  in  modern  time,  was 
that  the  pilot  who  came  out  from  New  York  to 
meet  Stevenson's  ship  was  known  as  Hyde  by  his 


256  STEVENSON 

crew,  while  his  better  tempered  companion  was 
known  as  Jekyll. 

Moreover,  with  so  powerful  a  stimulus  as  this 
story,  the  reading  public,  anxious  to  discover  more 
of  the  author,  soon  found  that  Stevenson  had  long 
been  a  romantic  moralist  in  fiction  and  in  the  essay. 
A  year  before  he  had  written  a  terrible  sermon  in 
the  form  of  a  murder  tale  called  "Markheim."  Two 
years  before  that  he  had  set  forth  his  whimsical 
philosophy  of  optimism  and  bravado  in  "The  Treas- 
ure of  Franchard,"  and  previously  still  in  "Provi- 
dence and  the  Guitar."  "Will  o'  the  Mill,"  "Lodg- 
ing for  the  Night,"  were  also  moral  ideas  in  the 
story  form.  The  public  discovered,  that  is,  that 
these  tales  were  exemplifications  of  the  ideas  of  his 
essays,  and  that  Stevenson's  work,  instead  of  being 
casual  magazine  work,  had  in  its  great  variety,  a 
marking  purpose.  The  author  of  "Ordered  South," 
"Apology  for  Idlers,"  "Aes  Triplex,"  "Lantern 
Bearers,"  "Child's  Play,"  was  giving  out  the  same 
message  as  the  author  of  Dr.  Jekyll,  "Markheim," 
"The  Treasure  of  Franchard."  v 

Let  us  attempt  to  perceive  from  other  fables 
what  the  gist  of  that  message  is. 

"Markheim"  is  in  many  ways  the  most  note- 
worthy and  the  most  original  of  Stevenson's  short 
stories.  Like  Dr.  Jekyll  it  is  a  hair-raising  piece  of 
philosophy;  and  it  has  much  the  same  significance. 
It  is  again  the  simple  union  of  sheer  romance  and 
downright  morality,  a  rare  trick  which  it  took  genius 
to  discover.     It  is  that  which  gives  the  tale  its 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  257 

flavor.  The  situation,  the  murder  that  is,  is  put 
before  us  in  one  of  those  carefully  vivid  scenes 
that  hang  in  the  memory  almost  intact  and  cast  their 
shadow  across  succeeding  pages.  Then  while  the 
imagination  is  thus  affected,  the  real  mystery,  the 
real  problem  of  the  story,  suddenly  confronts  us. 
And  in  this  lies  the  surpassing  art  of  Stevenson  as 
a  fabulist.  For  he  can  confront  us  with  the  terrible 
moral  question  of  Markheim  still  shrouded  in  all 
the  mystery  that  clings  to  it  in  every  human  life. 
The  question  is  that  of  moral  evil  and  the  soul. 
The  murderer  and  his  uncorrupted  better  self  come 
face  to  face.  But  does  such  a  better  self  really 
exist  for  Markheim,  or  is  it  only  a  bogle?  Ste- 
venson's answer  to  the  question  is  masterly.  He 
shows  Markheim  that  the  worst  sin  is  probably  the 
one  we  commit  in  the  hope  of  rescuing  our  better 
selves  which  we  have  all  along  been  ruining. 

These  two  stories,  "Markheim"  and  Dr.  Jekyll, 
are  striking  symbols  of  the  same  sharp  truth. 


IV 


Another  tale  of  quite  different  purport,  in  which 
adventure  and  philosophy  are  yet  blended  with 
similar  art,  is  "A  Lodging  for  the  Night."  It  -is 
significant  that  it  should  be  Stevenson's  first  story, 
and  that  it  should  have  in  addition  to  the  temper 
of  romance  the  fabulist's  touch.  Just  what  this 
does  for  the  romantic  adventure  can  be  thoroughly 
understood  if  one  comes  to  the  story  from  "The 


258  STEVENSON 

Pavilion  on  "the  Links,"  which  immediately  pre- 
cedes it  in  New  Arabian  Nights.  "The  Pavilion  on 
the  Links"  has  no  traces  of  ethics.  It  is  a  mere 
adventure  and  rather  loosely  strung  together.  "A 
Lodging  for  the  Night,"  on  the  other  hand,  is  a 
most  incisive  incident,  the  mark  it  leaves  being  as 
much  on  the  conscience  as  on  the  care- free  imagina- 
tion. Like  "Markheim,"  "Will  o'  the  Mill,"  or 
"Providence  and  the  Guitar,"  it  is  the  expression  of 
several  sides  of  Stevenson's  genius;  and  not,  like 
"The  Pavilion"  or  "The  Merry  Men,"  an  expression 
of  one  side  alone.  There  is  in  it  that  weight  of 
thought  and  that  precision  of  phrase  characteristic 
of  his  finest  essays,  and  also  a  heightened  at- 
mosphere of  romantic  excitement.  In  the  ability  to 
perfect  these  combined  qualities  lay  Stevenson's 
genius,  and  this  story  offers  an  exceptional  chance 
to  study  it. 

Stevenson  had  been  investigating  the  life  and 
times  of  Francois  Villon,  "student,  poet,  and  house- 
breaker," and  had  two  months  before  shaped  his 
inclinations  and  impressions  into  an  essay  for  The 
Cornhill.  That  essay  is  distinctly  a  document  in 
morals.  The  keenest  relish  of  the  humors  of  Vil- 
lon's escapades,  and  of  the  significance  for  French 
literature  of  his  flexible  lyric  verse,  do  not  prevent 
Stevenson  from  passing  a  judgment  of  conscience 
on  this  man  who  cast  his  jail-bird  sentiments  into 
so  deft  a  form.  As  in  the  essays  on  Burns  and  on 
Pepys,  he  is  intent  on  showing  a  man  in  his  true 
lights.     He  carefully  does  Villon  no  injustice.     A 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  259 

charming  indulgence,  however,  leads  finally  but  into 
the  strong  light  of  direct  comprehension.  I  wish  to 
quote  enough  of  the  essay  to  show  not  only  how 
vivid  is  Stevenson's  delineation  of  Villon's  character, 
but  also  the  skill  with  which  the  moralist  wins  our 
sympathy  for  his  victim.  Sympathy  alone  is  the 
basis  of  direct  comprehension.  This  is  one  of  Ste- 
venson's axioms  as  a  critic.  You  will  note  after- 
ward that  he  employs  a  nearly  similar  skill  and  a 
like  sympathy  in  constructing  his  romantic  tale  about 
the  scapegrace. 

The  essay  opens  as  follows : 

"Perhaps  one  of  the  most  curious  revolutions  in 
literary  history  is  the  sudden  bull's-eye  light  cast 
by  M.  Longnon  on  the  obscure  existence  of  Francois 
Villon.  His  book  is  not  remarkable  merely  as  a 
chapter  of  biography  exhumed  after  four  centuries. 
To  readers  of  the  poet  it  will  recall,  with  a  flavor 
of  satire,  that  characteristic  passage  in  which  he 
bequeaths  his  spectacles — with  a  humorous  reserva- 
tion of  the  case — to  the  hospital  for  blind  paupers 
known  as  the  Fifteen-Score.  Thus  equipped,  let 
the  blind  paupers  go  and  separate  the  good  from 
the  bad  in  the  cemetery  of  the  Innocents !  For  his 
own  part  the  poet  can  see  no  distinction.  Much 
have  the  dead  people  made  of  their  advantages. 
What  does  it  matter  now  that  they  have  lain  in  state 
beds  and  nourished  portly  bodies  upon  cakes  and 
cream !  Here  they  all  lie,  to  be  trodden  in  the  mud  ; 
the  large  estate  and  the  small,  sounding  virtue  and 


260  STEVENSON 

adroit  or  powerful  vice,  in  very  much  the  same  con- 
dition ;  and  a  bishop  not  to  be  distinguished  from  a 
lamplighter  with  even  the  strongest  spectacles." 

"Such,"  says  Stevenson,  "was  Villon's  cynical 
philosophy."  He  shows  how  poor  Villon,  poor, 
dependent,  well  enough  educated,  yet  lacking  any 
sense  of  obligation  to  his  benefactors,  was  early 
initiated  into  the  ways  of  the  crooks  of  the  student 
quarter  in  Paris.  So  the  poet  begins  to  lead  that 
life  of  thievery  that  he  celebrates  in  the  ballads. 

"And  yet  it  is  not  as  a  thief,  but  as  a  homicide, 
that  he  makes  his  first  appearance  before  angry 
justice.  One  June  5,  1455,  when  he  was  about 
twenty-four,  and  had  been  Master  of  Arts  for  a 
matter  of  three  years,  we  behold  him  for  the  first 
time  quite  definitely.  Angry  justice  had,  as  it  were, 
photographed  him  in  the  act  of  his  homicide;  and 
M.  Longnon,  rummaging  among  old  deeds,  has 
turned  up  the  negative  and  printed  it  off  for  our 
instruction.  Villon  had  been  supping — copiously 
we  may  believe — and  sat  on  a  stone  bench  in  front 
of  the  Church  of  St.  Benoit,  in  company  with  a 
priest  called  Gilles  and  a  woman  of  the  name  of 
Isabeau.  It  was  nine  o'clock,  a  mightly  late  hour 
for  the  period,  and  evidently  a  fine  summer's  night. 
Master  Francois  carried  a  mantle,  like  a  prudent 
man,  to  keep  him  from  the  dews  (serain),  and  had 
a  sword  below  it  dangling  from  his  girdle.  So  these 
three  dallied  in  front  of  St.  Benoit,  taking  their 
pleasure   (pour  soy  esbatre).     Suddenly  there  ar- 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  261 

rived  upon  the  scene  a  priest,  Philippe  Chermoye 
or  Sermaise,  also  with  a  sword  and  cloak,  and  ac- 
companied by  one  Master  Jehan  le  Mardi.  Ser- 
maise, according  to  Villon's  account,  which  is  all 
we  have  to  go  upon,  came  up  blustering  and  deny- 
ing God;  as  Villon  rose  to  make  room  for  him 
upon  the  bench,  thrust  him  rudely  back  into  his 
place;  and  finally  drew  his  sword  and  cut  open  his 
lower  lip,  by  what  I  should  imagine  was  a  very 
clumsy  stroke.  Up  to  this  point,  Villon  professes 
to  have  been  a  model  of  courtesy,  even  of  feeble- 
ness; and  the  brawl,  in  his  version,  reads  like  the 
fable  of  the  wolf  and  the  lamb.  But  now  the  lamb 
was  roused;  he  drew  his  sword,  stabbed  Sermaise 
in  the  groin,  knocked  him  on  the  head  with  a  big 
stone  and  then,  leaving  him  to  his  fate,  went  away 
to  have  his  own  lip  doctored  by  a  barbei  of  the  name 
of  Fouquet.  In  one  version,  he  says  that  Gilles, 
Isabeau,  and  Le  Mardi  ran  away  at  the  first  high 
words,  and  that  he  and  Sermaise  had  it  out  alone; 
in  another,  Le  Mardi  is  represented  as  returning 
and  wresting  Villon's  sword  from  him:  the  reader 
may  please  himself.  Sermaise  was  picked  up,  lay 
all  that  night  in  the  prison  of  St.  Benoit  where  he 
was  examined  by  an  official  of  the  Chatelet  and  ex- 
pressly pardoned  Villon,  and  died  on  the  following 
Saturday  in  the  Hotel  Dieu. 

"This,  as  I  have  said,  was  in  June.  Not  before 
January  of  the  next  year  could  Villon  extract  a 
pardon  from  the  king;  but  while  his  hand  was  in, 
he  got  two.    One  is  for  'Francois  des  Loges,  alias 


262  STEVENSON 

(autrement  dit)  de  Villon';  and  the  other  runs  in 
the  name  of  Francois  de  Montcorbier.  Nay,  it  ap- 
pears there  was  a  further  complication;  for  in  the 
narrative  of  the  first  of  these  documents,  it  is  men- 
tioned that  he  passed  himself  off  upon  Fouquet,  the 
barber-surgeon,  as  one  Michel  Mouton.  M.  Long- 
non  has  a  theory  that  this  unhappy  accident  with 
Sermaise  was  the  cause  of  Villon's  subsequent  ir- 
regularities; and  that  up  to  that  moment  he  had 
been  the  pink  of  good  behavior.  But  the  matter 
has  to  my  eyes  a  more  dubious  air.  A  pardon  neces- 
sary for  Des  Loges  and  another  for  Montcorbier? 
and  these  two  the  same  person?  and  one  or  both  of 
them  known  by  the  alias  of  Villon,  however  hon- 
estly come  by?  and  lastly,  in  the  heat  of  the  moment, 
a  fourth  name  thrown  out  with  an  assured  coun- 
tenance ?  A  ship  is  not  to  be  trusted  that  sails  under 
so  many  colours.  This  is  not  the  simple  bearing  of 
innocence.  No — the  young  master  was  already 
treading  crooked  paths;  already,  he  would  start 
and  blench  at  a  hand  upon  his  shoulder,  with  the 
look  we  know  so  well  in  the  face  of  Hogarth's  Idle 
Apprentice;  already,  in  the  blue  devils,  he  would 
see  Henry  Cousin,  the  executor  of  high  justice, 
going  in  dolorous  procession  toward  Montfaucon, 
and  hear  the  wind  and  the  birds  crying  around 
Paris  gibbet." 

This  is  a  sample  exploit;  and  here  is  another 
which  began  at  a  memorable  supper  at  the  Mule 
Tavern,  in  front  of  the  Church  of  St.  Mathurin. 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  263 

One  of  Villon's  crew,  Tabary,  had  ordered  the  sup- 
per.   Others  joined  them  at  the  feast. 

"This  supper  party  was  to  be  his  first  introduc- 
tion to  De  Cayeux  and  Petit- Jehan,  which  was  prob- 
ably a  matter  of  some  concern  to  the  poor  man's 
muddy  wits;  in  the  sequel,  at  least,  he  speaks  of 
both  with  an  undisguised  respect,  based  on  profes- 
sional inferiority  in  the  matter  of  picklocks.  Dom 
Nicolas,  a  Picardy  monk,  was  the  fifth  and  last  at 
table.  When  supper  had  been  despatched  and  fairly 
washed  down,  we  may  suppose,  with  white  Bai- 
gneux  or  red  Beaune,  which  were  favorite  wines 
among  the  fellowship,  Tabary  was  solemnly  sworn 
over  to  secrecy  on  the  night's  performances;  and 
the  party  left  the  Mule  and  proceeded  to  an  unoc- 
cupied house  belonging  to  Robert  de  Saint-Simon. 
This,  over  a  low  wall,  they  entered  without  diffi- 
culty. All  but  Tabary  took  off  their  upper  gar- 
ments; a  ladder  was  found  and  applied  to  the  high 
wall  which  separated  Saint-Simon's  house  from  the 
court  of  the  College  of  Navarre;  the  four  fellows 
in  their  shirt-sleeves  (as  we  might  say)  clambered 
over  in  a  twinkling:  and  Master  Guy  Tabary  re- 
mained alone  beside  the  overcoats.  From  the  court 
the  burglars  made  their  way  into  the  vestry  of  the 
chapel,  where  they  found  a  large  chest,  strengthened 
with  iron  bands  and  closed  with  four  locks.  One 
of  these  locks  they  picked,  and  then,  by  levering  up 
the  corner,  forced  the  other  three.  Inside  was  a 
small  coffer,  of  walnut  wood,  also  barred  with  iron, 


264  STEVENSON 

but  fastened  with  only  three  locks,  which  were  all 
comfortably  picked  by  the  way  of  the  keyhole.  In 
the  walnut  coffer — a  joyous  sight  by  our  thieves' 
lantern — were  five  hundred  crowns  of  gold.  There 
was  some  talk  of  opening  the  aumries,  where,  if 
they  had  only  known,  a  booty  eight  or  nine  times 
greater  lay  ready  to  their  hand,  but  one  of  the  party 
(I  have  a  humorous  suspicion  it  was  Dom  Nicolas, 
the  Picardy  monk)  hurried  them  away.  It  was  ten 
o'clock  when  they  mounted  the  ladder;  it  was  about 
midnight  before  Tabary  beheld  them  coming  back. 
To  him  they  gave  ten  crowns,  and  promised  a  share 
of  a  two-crown  dinner  on  the  morrow ;  whereat  we 
may  suppose  his  mouth  watered.  In  course  of  time, 
he  got  wind  of  the  real  amount  of  their  booty  and 
understood  how  scurvily  he  had  been  used;  but  he 
seems  to  have  borne  no  malice.  How  could  he, 
against  such  superb  operators  as  Petit- Jehan  and 
De  Cayeux ;  or  a  person  like  Villon,  who  could  have 
made  a  new  improper  romance  out  of  his  own  head, 
instead  of  merely  copying  an  old  one  with  mechan- 
ical right  hand?" 

Such  affairs  are  all  one  knows  of  Villon's  his- 
tory. His  temperament  is  illustrated  by  them  and  by 
his  poems,  especially  by  the  Large  Testament,  "that 
admirable  and  despicable  performance."  The  date 
of  this  work  "is  the  last  date  in  the  poet's  biogra- 
phy," Stevenson  remarks.  "How  or  when  he  died, 
whether  decently  in  bed  or  trussed  up  to  a  gallows, 
remains  a  riddle  for  foolhardy  commentators." — 
"Francois  Villon,"  Familiar  Studies. 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  265 

Now  I  think  that  any  one  who  may  have  tried 
it  will  tell  us  that  to  make  a  successful  short  story 
out  of  the  same  materials  with  which  he  has  con- 
structed a  critical  essay,  to  turn  suddenly  from  ap- 
preciated into  creator,  is  a  very  rare  gift.  Cer- 
tainly it  implies  an  intimacy  with  the  .subject,  a 
rapid  and  thorough  absorption  of  detail,  that  most 
students  of  literature  and  biography  never  even 
dream  of  striving  for.  Yet  all  that  this  comes  to, 
if  viewed  from  a  slightly  different  angle,  is  a  really 
sympathetic  comprehension  of  a  man.  It  would 
be  a  thesis  which  I  should  like  to  defend  that  any- 
body who  could  write  an  essay  as  thorough  as  Ste- 
venson's, could  also  write  a  story  as  vivid  as  "A 
Lodging  for  the  Night."  My  ground  of  argument 
would  be  that  the  story  and  the  essay  have  their 
essential  points  in  common:  a  personal  realization 
of  Villon's  humor,  a  perfectly  suggested  local  back- 
ground, and  the  taste  for  the  sort  of  moral  frame 
which  best  suits  the  portrait.  The  essay  begins 
with  a  whimsical  illustration  of  Villon's  philosophy 
of  life  and  death.  The  story  begins  with  an  illustra- 
tion of  the  actual  effect  of  death  on  Villon's  imagina- 
tion while  he  struggles  to  let  his  whimsical  philoso- 
phy reassert  itself.  The  essay  proceeds  to  detail  a 
set  of  his  escapades  and  to  draw  the  moral.  The 
story  selects  one  typical  escapade,  embellishes  it  with 
moralized  dialogue  to  suit,  and  then,  like  the  essay, 
thrusts  the  hero  forth  into  the  uncertainty  of  his 
vagabond  future. 


266  STEVENSON 

A   LODGING  FOR  THE  NIGHT 

"It  was  late  in  November,  1456.  The  snow  fell 
over  Paris  with  rigorous,  relentless  persistence; 
sometimes  the  wind  made  a  sally  and  scattered  it 
in  flying  vortices;  sometimes  there  was  a  lull,  and 
flake  after  flake  descended  out  of  the  black  night 
air,  silent,  circuitous,  interminable.  To  poor  people, 
looking  up  under  moist  eyebrows,  it  seemed  a  won- 
der where  it  all  came  from.  Master  Francis  Villon 
had  propounded  an  alternative  that  afternoon,  at  a 
tavern  window :  was  it  only  Pagan  Jupiter  plucking 
geese  upon  Olympus  ?  or  were  the  holy  angels  moult- 
ing? He  was  only  a  poor  Master  of  Arts,  he  went 
on;  and  as  the  question  somewhat  touched  upon 
divinity,  he  durst  not  venture  to  conclude.  A  silly 
old  priest  from  Montargis,  who  was  among  the 
company,  treated  the  young  rascal  to  a  bottle  of 
wine  in  honour  of  the  jest  and  grimaces  with  which 
it  was  accompanied,  and  swore  on  his  own  white 
beard  that  he  had  been  just  such  another  irreverent 
dog  when  he  was  Villon's  age. 

"The  air  was  raw  and  pointed,  but  not  far  below 
freezing;  and  the  flakes  were  large,  damp,  and  ad- 
hesive. The  whole  city  was  sheeted  up.  An  army 
might  have  marched  from  end  to  end  and  not  a  foot- 
fall given  the  alarm.  If  there  were  any  belated  birds 
in  heaven,  they  saw  the  island  like  a  large  white 
patch,  and  the  bridges  like  slim  white  spars,  on  the 
black  ground  of  the  river.  High  up  overhead  the 
snow  settled  among  the  tracery  of  the  cathedral 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  267 

towers.  Many  a  niche  was  drifted  full;  many  a 
statue  wore  a  long  white  bonnet  on  its  grotesque  or 
sainted  head.  The  gargoyles  had  been  transformed 
into  great  false  noses,  drooping  towards  the  point. 
The  crockets  were  like  upright  pillows  swollen  on 
one  side.  In  the  intervals  of  the  wind,  there  was 
a  dull  sound  of  dripping  about  the  precincts  of  the 
church. 

"The  cemetery  of  St.  John  had  taken  its  own  share 
of  the  snow.  All  the  graves  were  decently  covered ; 
tall  white  housetops  stood  around  in  grave  array; 
worthy  burghers  were  long  ago  in  bed,  be-night- 
capped  like  their  domiciles ;  there  was  no  light  in  all 
the  neighbourhood  but  a  little  peep  from  a  lamp 
that  hung  swinging  in  the  church  choir,  and  tossed 
the  shadows  to  and  fro  in  time  to  its  oscillations. 
The  clock  was  hard  on  ten  when  the  patrol  went  by 
with  halberds  and  a  lantern,  beating  their  hands; 
and  they  saw  nothing  suspicious  about  the  cemetery 
of  St.  John. 

"Yet  there  was  a  small  house,  backed  up  against 
the  cemetery  wall,  which  was  still  awake,  and  awake 
to  evil  purpose,  in  that  snoring  district.  There  was 
not  much  to  betray  it  from  without;  only  a  stream 
of  warm  vapour  from  the  chimney-top,  a  patch 
where  the  snow  melted  on  the  roof,  and  a  few  half- 
obliterated  footprints  at  the  door.  But  within,  be- 
hind the  shuttered  windows,  Master  Francis  Villon 
the  poet,  and  some  of  the  thievish  crew  with  whom 
he  consorted  were  keeping  the  night  alive  and  pass- 
ing round  the  bottle. 


268  STEVENSON 

"A  great  pile  of  living  embers  diffused  a  strong 
and  ruddy  glow  from  the  arched  chimney.  Before 
this  straddled  Dom  Nicolas,  the  Picardy  monk,  with 
his  skirts  picked  up  and  his  fat  legs  bared  to  the 
comfortable  warmth.  His  dilated  shadow  cut  the 
room  in  half;  and  the  firelight  only  escaped  on  either 
side  of  his  broad  person,  and  in  a  little  pool  between 
his  outspread  feet.  His  face  had  the  beery,  bruised 
appearance  of  the  continual  drinker's;  it  was  cov- 
ered with  a  network  of  congested  veins,  purple  in 
ordinary  circumstances,  but  now  pale  violet,  for  even 
with  his  back  to  the  fire  the  cold  pinched  him  on 
the  other  side.  His  cowl  had  half  fallen  back,  and 
made  a  strange  excrescence  on  either  side  of  his 
bull  neck.  So  he  straddled,  grumbling,  and  cut  the 
room  in  half  with  the  shadow  of  his  portly  frame. 

"On  the  right,  Villon  and  Guy  Tabary  were  hud- 
dled together  over  a  scrap  of  parchment;  Villon 
making  a  ballade  which  he  was  to  call  the  'Ballade 
of  Roast  Fish/  and  Tabary  spluttering  admiration 
at  his  shoulder.  The  poet  was  a  rag  of  a  man, 
dark,  little,  and  lean,  with  hollow  cheeks  and  thin 
black  locks.  He  carried  his  four-and-twenty  years 
with  feverish  animation.  Greed  had  made  folds 
about  his  eyes,  evil  smiles  had  puckered  his  mouth. 
The  wolf  and  pig  struggled  together  in  his  face. 
It  was  an  eloquent,  sharp,  ugly,  earthly  countenance. 
His  hands  were  small  and  prehensile,  with  fingers 
knotted  like  a  cord ;  and  they  were  continually  flick- 
ering in  front  of  him  in  violent  and  expressive  pan- 
tomime.   As  for  Tabary,  a  broad,  complacent,  ad- 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  269 

miring  imbecility  breathed  from  his  squash  nose  and 
slobbering  lips:  he  had  become  a  thief,  just  as  he 
might  have  become  the  most  decent  of  burgesses, 
by  the  imperious  chance  that  rules  the  lives  of 
human  geese  and  human  donkeys. 

"At  the  monk's  other  hand,  Montigny  and  The- 
venin  Pensete  played  a  game  of  chance.  About 
the  first  there  clung  some  flavour  of  good  birth 
and  training,  as  about  a  fallen  angel;  something 
long,  lithe,  and  courtly  in  the  person;  something 
aquiline  and  darkling  in  the  face.  Thevenin,  poor 
soul,  was  in  great  feather:  he  had  done  a  good 
stroke  of  knavery  that  afternoon  in  the  Faubourg 
St.  Jacques,  and  all  night  he  had  been  gaining  from 
Montigny.  A  flat  smile  illuminated  his  face;  his 
bald  head  shone  rosily  in  a  garland  of  red  curls; 
his  little  protuberant  stomach  shook  with  silent 
chucklings  as  he  swept  in  his  gains. 

"  'Doubles  or  quits  ?'  said  Thevenin. 

"Montigny  nodded  grimly. 

"  'Some  may  prefer  to  dine  in  state/  wrote  Villon, 
'On  bread  and  cheese  on  silver  plate.  Or,  or — help 
me  out,  Guido!' 

"Tabary  giggled. 

"  'Or  parsley  on  a  golden  dish'  scribbled  the  poet. 

"The  wind  was  freshening  without;  it  drove  the 
snow  before  it,  and  sometimes  raised  its  voice  in  a 
victorious  whoop,  and  made  sepulchral  grumblings 
in  the  chimney.  The  cold  was  growing  sharper  as 
the  night  went  on.  Villon,  protruding  his  lips,  im- 
itated the  gust  with  something  between  a  whistle 


270  STEVENSON 

and  a  groan.    It  was  an  eerie,  uncomfortable  talent 
of  the  poet's,  much  detested  by  the  Picardy  monk. 

"'Can't  you  hear  it  rattle  in  the  gibbet?'  said 
Villon.  'They  are  all  dancing  the  devil's  jig  on 
nothing,  up  there.  You  may  dance,  my  gallants, 
you'll  be  none  the  warmer!  Whew!  what  a  gust! 
Down  went  somebody  just  now !  A  medlar  the 
fewer  on  the  three-legged  medlar-tree ! — I  say,  Dom 
Nicolas,  it'll  be  cold  to-night  on  the  St.  Denis  Road  ?' 
he  asked. 

"Dom  Nicolas  winked  both  his  big  eyes,  and 
seemed  to  choke  upon  his  Adam's  apple.  Montfau- 
con,  the  great  grisly  Paris  gibbet,  stood  hard  by  the 
St.  Denis  Road,  and  the  pleasantry  touched  him  on 
the  raw.  As  for  Tabary,  he  laughed  immoderately 
over  the  medlars ;  he  had  never  heard  anything  more 
light-hearted;  and  he  held  his  sides  and  crowed. 
Villon  fetched  him  a  fillip  on  the  nose,  which  turned 
his  mirth  into  an  attack  of  coughing. 

"  'Oh,  stop  that  row,'  said  Villon,  'and  think  of 
rhymes  to  "fish."' 

"  'Doubles  or  quits/  said  Montigny  doggedly. 

"  'With  all  my  heart,'  quoth  Thevenin. 

"'Is  there  any  more  in  that  bottle?'  asked  the 
monk. 

"  'Open  another,'  said  Villon.  'How  do  you  ever 
hope  to  fill  that  big  hogshead,  your  body,  with  little 
things  like  bottles  ?  And  how  do  you  expect  to  get 
to  heaven?  How  many  angels,  do  you  fancy,  can 
be  spared  to  carry  up  a  single  monk  from  Picardy? 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  271 

Or  do  you  think  yourself  another  Elias — and  they'll 
send  the  coach  for  you  ?' 

"  'Hotninibus  impossibile/  replied  the  monk  as  he 
filled  his  glass. 

"Tabary  was  in  ecstasies. 

"Villon  filliped  his  nose  again. 

"  'Laugh  at  my  jokes,  if  you  like/  he  said. 

"  'It  was  very  good,'  objected  Tabary. 

"Villon  made  a  face  at  him.  Think  of  rhymes  to 
"fish,"  '  he  said.  'What  have  you  to  do  with  Latin? 
You'll  wish  you  knew  none  of  it  at  the  great  as- 
sizes, when  the  devil  calls  for  Guido  Tabary,  cleri- 
cus — the  devil  with  the  hump-back  and  red-hot 
finger-nails.  Talking  of  the  devil,'  he  added  in  a 
whisper,  'look  at  Montignyl' 

"All  three  peered  covertly  at  the  gamester.  He 
did  not  seem  to  be  enjoying  his  luck.  His  mouth 
was  a  little  to  a  side;  one  nostril  nearly  shut,  and 
the  other  much  inflated.  The  black  dog  was  on  his 
back,  as  people  say,  in  terrifying  nursery  metaphor; 
and  he  breathed  hard  under  the  gruesome  burden. 

"  'He  looks  as  if  he  could  knife  him,'  whispered 
Tabary,  with  round  eyes. 

"The  monk  shuddered,  and  turned  his  face  and 
spread  his  open  hands  to  the  red  embers.  It  was 
the  cold  that  thus  affected  Dom  Nicolas,  and  not  any 
excess  of  moral  sensibility. 

"  'Come,  now,'  said  Villon —  'about  this  ballade. 
How  does  it  run  so  far?'  And  beating  time  with 
his  hand,  he  read  it  aloud  to  Tabary. 


272  STEVENSON 

"They  were  interrupted  at  the  fourth  rhyme  by 
a  brief  and  fatal  movement  among  the  gamesters. 
The  round  was  completed,  and  Thevenin  was  just 
opening  his  mouth  to  claim  another  victory,  when 
Montigny  leaped  up,  swift  as  an  adder,  and  stabbed 
him  to  the  heart.  The  blow  took  effect  before  he 
had  time  to  utter  a  cry,  before  he  had  time  to  move. 
A  tremor  or  two  convulsed  his  frame;  his  hands 
opened  and  shut,  his  heels  rattled  on  the  floor;  then 
his  head  rolled  backward  over  one  shoulder  with  the 
eyes  wide  open,  and  Thevenin  Pensete's  spirit  had 
returned  to  Him  who  made  it. 

"Every  one  sprang  to  his  feet;  but  the  business 
was  over  in  two  twos.  The  four  living  fellows 
looked  at  each  other  in  rather  a  ghastly  fashion; 
the  dead  man  contemplating  a  corner  of  the  roof 
with  a  singular  and  ugly  leer. 

"  'My  God !'  said  Tabary ;  and  he  began  to  pray 
in  Latin. 

"Villon  broke  out  into  hysterical  laughter.  He 
came  a  step  forward  and  ducked  a  ridiculous  bow 
at  Thevenin,  and  laughed  still  louder.  Then  he  sat 
down  suddenly,  all  of  a  heap,  upon  a  stool,  and 
continued  laughing  bitterly  as  though  he  would 
shake  himself  to  pieces. 

"Montigny  recovered  his  composure  first. 

"  'Let's  see  what  he  has  about  him,'  he  remarked, 
and  he  picked  the  dead  man's  pockets  with  a  prac- 
tised hand,  and  divided  the  money  into  four  equal 
portions  on  the  table.    'There's  for  you,'  he  said. 

"The  monk  received  his  share  with  a  deep  sigh, 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  273 

and  a  single  stealthy  glance  at  the  dead  Thevenin, 
who  was  beginning  to  sink  into  himself  and  topple 
sideways  off  the  chair. 

"  'We're  all  in  for  it/  cried  Villon,  swallowing 
his  mirth.  'It's  a  hanging  job  for  every  man  jack 
of  us  that's  here — not  to  speak  of  those  who  aren't.' 
He  made  a  shocking  gesture  in  the  air  with  his 
raised  right  hand,  and  put  out  his  tongue  and  threw 
his  head  on  one  side,  so  as  to  counterfeit  the  ap- 
pearance of  one  who  has  been  hanged.  Then  he 
pocketed  his  share  of  the  spoil,  and  executed  a 
shuffle  with  his  feet  as  if  to  restore  the  circulation. 

"Tabary  was  the  last  to  help  himself;  he  made  a 
dash  at  the  money,  and  retired  to  the  other  end  of 
the  apartment. 

"Montigny  stuck  Thevenin  upright  in  the  chair, 
and  drew  out  the  dagger,  which  was  followed  by  a 
jet  of  blood. 

"  'You  fellows  had  better  be  moving,'  he  said,  as 
he  wiped  the  blade  on  his  victim's  doublet. 

"  'I  think  we  had,'  returned  Villon,  with  a  gulp. 
'Damn  his  fat  head !'  he  broke  out.  'It  sticks  in  my 
throat  like  phlegm.  What  right  has  a  man  to  have 
red  hair  when  he  is  dead  ?'  And  he  fell  all  of  a  heap 
again  upon  the  stool,  and  fairly  covered  his  face 
with  his  hands. 

"Montigny  and  Dom  Nicolas  laughed  aloud,  even 
Tabary  feebly  chiming  in. 

"  'Cry  baby,'  said  the  monk. 

"  'I  always  said  he  was  a  woman,'  added  Mon- 
tigny, with  a  sneer.     'Sit  up,  can't  you?'  he  went 


274  STEVENSON 

on,  giving  another  shake  to  the  murdered  body. 
Tread  out  that  fire,  Nick !' 

"But  Nick  was  better  employed;  he  was  quietly 
taking  Villon's  purse,  as  the  poet  sat,  limp  and 
trembling,  on  the  stool  where  he  had  been  making 
a  ballade  not  three  minutes  before.  Montigny  and 
Tabary  dumbly  demanded  a  share  of  the  booty, 
which  the  monk  silently  promised  as  he  passed  the 
little  bag  into  the  bosom  of  his  gown.  In  many 
ways  an  artistic  nature  unfits  a  man  for  practical 
existence. 

"No  sooner  had  the  theft  been  accomplished  than 
Villon  shook  himself,  jumped  to  his  feet,  and  began 
helping  to  scatter  and  extinguish  the  embers.  Mean- 
while Montigny  opened  the  door  and  cautiously 
peered  into  the  street.  The  coast  was  clear;  there 
was  no  meddlesome  patrol  in  sight.  Still  it  was 
judged  wiser  to  slip  out  severally;  and  as  Villon 
was  himself  in  a  hurry  to  escape  from  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  dead  Thevenin,  and  the  rest  were 
in  a  still  greater  hurry  to  get  rid  of  him  before  he 
should  discover  the  loss  of  his  money,  he  was  the 
first  by  general  consent  to  issue  forth  into  the  street. 

"The  wind  had  triumphed  and  swept  all  the  clouds 
from  heaven.  Only  a  few  vapours,  as  thin  as  moon- 
light, fleeted  rapidly  across  the  stars.  It  was  bitter 
cold ;  and  by  a  common  optical  effect,  things  seemed 
almost  more  definite  than  in  the  broadest  daylight. 
The  sleeping  city  was  absolutely  still;  a  company  of 
white  hoods,  a  field  full  of  little  alps,  below  the 
twinkling  stars.    Villon  cursed  his  fortune.    Would 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  275 

it  were  still  snowing!  Now,  wherever  he  went,  he 
left  an  indelible  trail  behind  him  on  the  glittering 
streets;  wherever  he  went  he  was  still  tethered  to 
the  house  by  the  cemetery  of  St.  John;  wherever  he 
went  he  must  weave,  with  his  own  plodding  feet, 
the  rope  that  bound  him  to  the  crime  and  would 
bind  him  to  the  gallows.  The  leer  of  the  dead  man 
came  back  to  him  with  a  new  significance.  He 
snapped  his  fingers  as  if  to  pluck  up  his  own  spirits, 
and  choosing  a  street  at  random,  stepped  boldly 
forward  in  the  snow. 

"Two  things  preoccupied  him  as  he  went:  the 
aspect  of  the  gallows  at  Montfaucon  in  this  bright, 
windy  phase  of  the  night's  existence,  for  one;  and 
for  another,  the  look  of  the  dead  man  with  his  bald 
head  and  garland  of  red  curls.  Both  struck  cold 
upon  his  heart,  and  he  kept  quickening  his  pace  as 
if  he  could  escape  from  unpleasant  thoughts  by 
mere  fleetness  of  foot.  Sometimes  he  looked  back 
over  his  shoulder  with  a  sudden  nervous  jerk;  but 
he  was  the  only  moving  thing  in  the  white  streets, 
except  when  the  wind  swooped  round  a  corner  and 
threw  up  the  snow,  which  was  beginning  to  freeze, 
in  spouts  of  glittering  dust. 

"Suddenly  he  saw,  a  long  way  before  him,  a  black 
clump  and  a  couple  of  lanterns.  The  clump  was  in 
motion,  and  the  lanterns  swung  as  though  carried 
by  men  walking.  It  was  a  patrol.  And  though  it 
was  merely  crossing  his  line  of  march  he  judged  it 
wiser  to  get  out  of  eyeshot  as  speedily  as  he  could. 
He  was  not  in  the  humour  to  be  challenged,  and  he 


276  STEVENSON 

was  conscious  of  making  a  very  conspicuous  mark 
upon  the  snow.  Just  on  his  left  hand  there  stood  a 
great  hotel,  with  some  turrets  and  a  large  porch  be- 
fore the  door;  it  was  half -ruinous,  he  remembered, 
and  had  long  stood  empty;  and  so  he  made  three 
steps  of  it,  and  jumped  into  the  shelter  of  the  porch. 
It  was  pretty  dark  inside,  after  the  glimmer  of  the 
snowy  streets,  and  he  was  groping  forward  with 
outspread  hands,  when  he  stumbled  over  some  sub- 
stance which  offered  an  indescribable  mixture  of 
resistances,  hard  and  soft,  firm  and  loose.  His 
heart  gave  a  leap,  and  he  sprang  two  steps  back 
and  stared  dreadfully  at  the  obstacle.  Then  he  gave 
a  little  laugh  of  relief.  It  was  only  a  woman,  and 
she  dead.  He  knelt  beside  her  to  make  sure  upon 
this  latter  point.  She  was  freezing  cold,  and  rigid 
like  a  stick.  A  little  ragged  finery  fluttered  in  the 
wind  about  her  hair,  and  her  cheeks  had  been  heavily 
rouged  that  same  afternoon.  Her  pockets  were  quite 
empty;  but  in  her  stocking,  underneath  the  garter, 
Villon  found  two  of  the  small  coins  that  went  by  the 
name  of  whites.  It  was  little  enough;  but  it  was 
always  something;  and  the  poet  was  moved  with  a 
deep  sense  of  pathos  that  she  should  have  died  be- 
fore she  had  spent  her  money.  That  seemed  to  him 
a  dark  and  pitiable  mystery;  and  he  looked  from 
the  coins  in  his  hand  to  the  dead  woman,  and  back 
again  to  the  coins,  shaking  his  head  over  the  riddle 
of  man's  life.  Henry  V  of  England,  dying  at  Vin- 
cennes  just  after  he  had  conquered  France,  and  this 
poor  jade  cut  off  by  a  cold  draught  in  a  great  man's 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  277 

doorway,  before  she  had  time  to  spend  her  couple 
of  whites — it  seemed  a  cruel  way  to  carry  on  the 
world.  Two  whites  would  have  taken  such  a  little 
while  to  squander;  and  yet  it  would  have  been  one 
more  good  taste  in  the  mouth,  one  more  smack  of 
the  lips,  before  the  devil  got  the  soul,  and  the  body 
was  left  to  birds  and  vermin.  He  would  like  to 
use  all  his  tallow  before  the  light  was  blown  out 
and  the  lantern  broken. 

"While  these  thoughts  were  passing  through  his 
mind,  he  was  feeling,  half  mechanically,  for  his 
purse.  Suddenly  his  heart  stopped  beating;  a  feel- 
ing of  cold  scales  passed  up  the  back  of  his  legs, 
and  a  cold  blow  seemed  to  fall  upon  his  scalp.  He 
stood  petrified  for  a  moment;  then  he  felt  again 
with  one  feverish  movement ;  and  then  his  loss  burst 
upon  him,  and  he  was  covered  at  once  with  perspira- 
tion. To  spendthrifts  money  is  so  living  and  actual 
— it  is  such  a  thin  veil  between  them  and  their  pleas- 
ures !  There  is  only  one  limit  to  their  fortune — that 
of  time;  and  a  spendthrift  with  only  a  few  crowns 
is  the  Emperor  of  Rome  until  they  are  spent.  For 
such  a  person  to  lose  his  money  is  to  suffer  the 
most  shocking  reverse,  and  fall  from  heaven  to 
hell,  from  all  to  nothing,  in  a  breath.  And  all  the 
more  if  he  has  put  his  head  in  the  halter  for  it; 
if  he  may  be  hanged  to-morrow  for  that  same  purse, 
so  dearly  earned,  so  foolishly  departed!  Villon 
stood  and  cursed ;  he  threw  the  two  whites  into  the 
street ;  he  shook  his  fist  at  heaven ;  he  stamped,  and 
was  not  horrified  to  find  himself  trampling  the  poor 


278  STEVENSON 

corpse.  Then  he  began  rapidly  to  retrace  his  steps 
towards  the  house  beside  the  cemetery.  He  had 
forgotten  all  fear  of  the  patrol,  which  was  long 
gone  by  at  any  rate,  and  had  no  idea  but  that  of 
his  lost  purse.  It  was  in  vain  that  he  looked  right 
and  left  upon  the  snow :  nothing  was  to  be  seen.  He 
had  not  dropped  it  in  the  streets.  Had  it  fallen 
in  the  house?  He  would  have  liked  dearly  to  go 
in  and  see;  but  the  idea  of  the  grisly  occupant  un- 
manned him.  And  he  saw  besides,  as  he  drew  near, 
that  their  efforts  to  put  out  the  fire  had  been  unsuc- 
cessful ;  on  the  contrary,  it  had  broken  into  a  blaze, 
and  a  changeful  light  played  in  the  chinks  of  door 
and  window,  and  revived  his  terror  for  the  au- 
thorities and  Paris  gibbet. 

"He  returned  to  the  hotel  with  the  porch,  and 
groped  about  upon  the  snow  for  the  money  he  had 
thrown  away  in  his  childish  passion.  But  he  could 
only  find  one  white ;  the  other  had  probably  struck 
sideways  and  sunk  deeply  in.  With  a  single  white 
in  his  pocket,  all  his  projects  for  a  rousing  night 
in  some  wild  tavern  vanished  utterly  away.  And 
it  was  not  only  pleasure  that  fled  laughing  from  his 
grasp;  positive  discomfort,  positive  pain,  attacked 
him  as  he  stood  ruefully  before  the  porch.  His 
perspiration  had  dried  upon  him;  and  although  the 
wind  had  now  fallen,  a  binding  frost  was  setting 
in  stronger  with  every  hour,  and  he  felt  benumbed 
and  sick  at  heart.  What  was  to  be  done  ?  Late  as 
was    the   hour,    improbable    as    was    success,    he 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  279 

would  try  the  house  of  his  adopted  father,  the  chap- 
lain of  St.  Benoit. 

"He  ran  there  all  the  way,  and  knocked  timidly. 
There  was  no  answer.  He  knocked  again  and  again, 
taking  heart  with  every  stroke;  and  at  last  steps 
were  heard  approaching  from  within.  A  barred 
wicket  fell  open  in  the  iron-studded  door,  and 
emitted  a  gush  of  yellow  light. 

"  'Hold  up  your  face  to  the  wicket/  said  the  chap- 
lain from  within. 

"  'It's  only  me/  whimpered  Villon. 

"  'Oh,  it's  only  you,  is  it  ?'  returned  the  chaplain ; 
and  he  cursed  him  with  foul  unpriestly  oaths  for  dis- 
turbing him  at  such  an  hour,  and  bade  him  be  off 
to  hell,  where  he  came  from. 

"  'My  hands  are  blue  to  the  wrist/  pleaded  Villon ; 
'my  feet  are  dead  and  full  of  twinges;  my  nose 
aches  with  the  sharp  air;  the  cold  lies  at  my  heart. 
I  may  be  dead  before  morning.  Only  this  once, 
father,  and  before  God,  I  will  never  ask  again'/ 

"  'You  should  have  come  earlier/  said  the  ecclesi- 
astic coolly.  'Young  men  require  a  lesson  now  and 
then/  He  shut  the  wicket  and  retired  deliberately 
into  the  interior  of  the  house. 

"Villon  was  beside  himself ;  he  beat  upon  the  door 
with  his  hands  and  feet,  and  shouted  hoarsely  after 
the  chaplain. 

"  'Wormy  old  fox!'  he  cried.  'If  I  had  my  hand 
under  your  twist,  I  would  send  you  flying  headlong 
into  the  bottomless  pit/ 


280  STEVENSON 

"A  door  shut  in  the  interior,  faintly  audible  to 
the  poet  down  long  passages.  He  passed  his  hand 
over  his  mouth  with  an  oath.  And  then  the  humour 
of  the  situation  struck  him,  and  he  laughed  and 
looked  lightly  up  to  heaven,  where  the  stars  seemed 
to  be  winking  over  his  discomfiture. 

"What  was  to  be  done?  It  looked  very  like  a 
night  in  the  frosty  streets.  The  idea  of  the  dead 
woman  popped  into  his  imagination,  and  gave  him 
a  hearty  fright;  what  had  happened  to  her  in  the 
early  night  might  very  well  happen  to  him  before 
morning.  And  he  so  young!  and  with  such  im- 
mense possibilities  of  disorderly  amusement  before 
him!  He  felt  quite  pathetic  over  the  notion  of  his 
own  fate,  as  if  it  had  been  some  one  else's,  and  made 
a  little  imaginative  vignette  of  the  scene  in  the 
morning  when  they  should  find  his  body. 

"He  passed  all  his  chances  under  review,  turning 
the  white  between  his  thumb  and  forefinger.  Un- 
fortunately he  was  on  bad  terms  with  some  old 
friends  who  would  once  have  taken  pity  on  him  in 
such  a  plight.  He  had  lampooned  them  in  verses; 
he  had  beaten  and  cheated  them ;  and  yet  now,  when 
he  was  in  so  close  a  pinch,  he  thought  there  was  at 
least  one  who  might  perhaps  relent.  It  was  a  chance. 
It  was  worth  trying  at  least,  and  he  would  go 
and  see. 

"On  the  way,  two  little  accidents  happened  to 
him  which  coloured  his  musings  in  a  very  different 
manner.  For,  first,  he  fell  in  with  the  track  of  a 
patrol,  and  walked  in  it  for  some  hundred  yards, 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  281 

although  it  lay  out  of  his  direction.  And  this 
spirited  him  up;  at  least  he  had  confused  his  trail; 
for  he  was  still  possessed  with  the  idea  of  people 
tracking  him  all  about  Paris  over  the  snow,  and 
collaring  him  next  morning  before  he  was  awake. 
The  other  matter  affected  him  quite  differently.  He 
passed  a  street  corner,  where,  not  so  long  before, 
a  woman  and  her  child  had  been  devoured  by  wolves. 
This  was  just  the  kind  of  weather,  he  reflected  when 
wolves  might  take  it  into  their  heads  to  enter  Paris 
again;  and  a  lone  man  in  these  deserted  streets 
would  run  the  chance  of  something  worse  than  a 
mere  scare.  He  stopped  and  looked  upon  the  place 
with  an  unpleasant  interest — it  was  a  centre  where 
several  lanes  intersected  each  other;  and  he  looked 
down  them  all,  one  after  another,  and  held  his 
breath  to  listen,  lest  he  should  detect  some  galloping 
black  things  on  the  snow  or  hear  the  sound  of  howl- 
ing between  him  and  the  river.  He  remembered 
his  mother  telling  him  the  story  and  pointing  out 
the  spot,  while  he  was  yet  a  child.  His  mother! 
If  he  only  knew  where  she  lived,  he  might  make 
sure  at  least  of  shelter.  He  determined  he  would 
inquire  upon  the  morrow ;  nay,  he  would  go  and  see 
her  too,  poor  old  girl!  So  thinking,  he  arrived  at 
his  destination — his  last  hope  for  the  night. 

"The  house  was  quite  dark,  like  its  neighbours; 
and  yet  after  a  few  taps,  he  heard  a  movement  over- 
head, a  door  opening,  and  a  cautious  voice  asking 
who  was  there.  The  poet  named  himself  in  a  loud 
whisper,  and  waited,  not  without  some  trepidation, 


282  STEVENSON 

the  result.  Nor  had  he  to  wait  long.  A  window 
was  suddenly  opened,  and  a  pailful  of  slops  splashed 
down  upon  the  doorstep.  Villon  had  not  been  un- 
prepared for  something  of  the  sort,  and  had  put 
himself  as  much  in  shelter  as  the  nature  of  the  porch 
admitted;  but  for  all  that,  he  was  deplorably 
drenched  below  the  waist.  His  hose  began  to  freeze 
almost  at  once.  Death  from  cold  and  exposure 
stared  him  in  the  face;  he  remembered  he  was  of 
phthisical  tendency,  and  began  coughing  tentatively. 
But  the  gravity  of  the  danger  steadied  his  nerve*. 
He  stopped  a  few  hundred  yards  from  the  door 
where  he  had  been  so  rudely  used,  and  reflected  with 
his  finger  to  his  nose.  He  could  only  see  one  way 
of  getting  a  lodging,  and  that  was  to  take  it.  He 
had  noticed  a  house  not  far  away,  which  looked  as 
if  it  might  be  easily  broken  into,  and  thither  he  be- 
took himself  promptly,  entertaining  himself  on  the 
way  with  the  idea  of  a  room  still  hot,  with  a  table 
still  loaded  with  the  remains  of  supper,  where  he 
might  pass  the  rest  of  the  black  hours  and  whence 
he  should  issue,  on  the  morrow,  with  an  armful 
of  valuable  plate.  He  even  considered  on  what 
viands  and  what  wines  he  should  prefer;  and  as  he 
was  calling  the  roll  of  his  favourite  dainties,  roast 
fish  presented  itself  to  his  mind  with  an  odd  mixture 
of  amusement  and  horror. 

"  'I  shall  never  finish  that  ballade,'  he  thought  to 
himself;  and  then,  with  another  shudder  at  the  recol- 
lection, 'Oh,  damn  his  fat  head!'  he  repeated  fer- 
vently, and  spat  upon  the  snow. 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  283 

"The  house  in  question  looked  dark  at  first  sight ; 
but  as  Villon  made  a  preliminary  inspection  in  search 
of  the  handiest  point  of  attack,  a  little  twinkle  of 
light  caught  his  eye  from  behind  a  curtained  window. 

"  The  devil !'  he  thought.  'People  awake !  Some 
student  or  some  saint,  confound  the  crew !  Can't  they 
get  drunk  and  lie  in  bed  snoring  like  their  neigh- 
bours !  What's  the  good  of  curfew,  and  poor  devils 
of  bell-ringers  jumping  at  a  rope's  end  in  bell- 
towers?  What's  the  use  of  day,  if  people  sit  up  all 
night  ?  The  gripes  to  them  f  He  grinned  as  he  saw 
where  his  logic  was  leading  him.  'Every  man  to 
his  business,  after  all/  added  he,  'and  if  they're 
awake,  by  the  Lord,  I  may  come  by  a  supper  hon- 
estly for  once,  and  cheat  the  devil.' 

"He  went  boldly  to  the  door  and  knocked  with  an 
assured  hand.  On  both  previous  occasions,  he  had 
knocked  timidly  and  with  some  dread  of  attracting 
notice;  but  now  when  he  had  just  discarded  the 
thought  of  a  burglarious  entry,  knocking  at  a  door 
seemed  a  mighty  simple  and  innocent  proceeding. 
The  sound  of  his  blows  echoed  through  the  house 
with  thin,  phantasmal  reverberations,  as  though  it 
were  quite  empty ;  but  these  had  scarcely  died  away 
before  a  measured  tread  drew  near,  a  couple  of  bolts 
were  withdrawn,  and  one  wing  was  opened  broadly, 
as  though  no  guile  or  fear  of  guile  were  known  to 
those  within.  A  tall  figure  of  a  man,  muscular  and 
spare,  but  a  little  bent,  confronted  Villon.  The  head 
was  massive  in  bulk,  but  finely  sculptured ;  the  nose 
blunt  at  the  bottom,  but  refining  upward  to  where  it 


284  STEVENSON 

joined  a  pair  of  strong  and  honest  eyebrows;  the 
mouth  and  eyes  surrounded  with  delicate  markings, 
and  the  whole  face  based  upon  a  thick  white  beard, 
boldly  and  squarely  trimmed.  Seen  as  it  was  by  the 
light  of  a  flickering  hand-lamp,  it  looked  perhaps 
nobler  than  it  had  a  right  to  do;  but  it  was  a  fine 
face,  honourable  rather  than  intelligent,  strong, 
simple,  and  righteous. 

"  'You  knock  late,  sir,'  said  the  old  man  in 
resonant,  courteous  tones. 

"Villon  cringed  and  brought  up  many  servile 
words  of  apology;  at  a  crisis  of  this  sort,  the  beggar 
was  uppermost  in  him,  and  the  man  of  genius  hid  his 
head  with  confusion. 

"  'You  are  cold,'  repeated  the  old  man,  'and  hun- 
gry? Well,  step  in.'  And  he  ordered  him  into  the 
house  with  a  noble  enough  gesture. 

"  'Some  great  seigneur/  thought  Villon,  as  his 
host,  setting  down  the  lamp  on  the  flagged  pave- 
ment of  the  entry,  shot  the  bolts  once  more  into 
their  places. 

"  'You  will  pardon  me  if  I  go  in  front,'  he  said, 
when  this  was  done;  and  he  preceded  the  poet  up- 
stairs into  a  large  apartment,  warmed  with  a  pan 
of  charcoal  and  lit  by  a  great  lamp  hanging  from 
the  roof.  It  was  very  bare  of  furniture :  only  some 
gold  plate  on  a  sideboard ;  some  folios ;  and  a  stand 
of  armour  between  the  windows.  Some  smart 
tapestry  hung  upon  the  walls,  representing  the  cru- 
cifixion of  our  Lord  in  one  piece,  and  in  another  a 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  285 

scene  of  shepherds  and  shepherdesses  by  a  running 
stream.    Over  the  chimney  was  a  shield  of  arms. 

"  'Will  you  seat  yourself,'  said  the  old  man,  'and 
forgive  me  if  I  leave  you?  I  am  alone  in  my  house 
to-night,  and  if  you  are  to  eat  I  must  forage  for 
you  myself.' 

"No  sooner  was  his  host  gone  than  Villon  leaped 
from  the  chair  on  which  he  had  just  seated  him- 
self, and  began  examining  the  room,  with  the  stealth 
and  passion  of  a  cat.  He  weighed  the  gold  flagons 
in  his  hand,  opened  all  the  folios,  and  investigated 
the  arms  upon  the  shield,  and  the  stuff  with  which 
the  seats  were  lined.  He  raised  the  window  cur- 
tains, and  saw  that  the  windows  were  set  with  rich 
stained  glass  in  figures,  so  far  as  he  could  see,  of 
martial  import.  Then  he  stood  in  the  middle  of 
the  room,  drew  a  long  breath,  and  retaining  it  with 
puffed  cheeks,  looked  round  and  round  him,  turning 
on  his  heels,  as  if  to  impress  every  feature  of  the 
apartment  on  his  memory. 

"  'Seven  pieces  of  plate,'  he  said.  'If  there  had 
been  ten,  I  would  have  risked  it.  A  fine  house,  and 
a  fine  old  master,  so  help  me  all  the  saints !' 

"And  just  then,  hearing  the  old  man's  tread  re- 
turning along  the  corridor,  he  stole  back  to  his  chair, 
and  began  humbly  toasting  his  wet  legs  before  the 
charcoal  pan. 

"His  entertainer  had  a  plate  of  meat  in  one  hand 
and  a  jug  of  wine  in  the  other.  He  set  down  the 
plate  upon  the  table,  motioning  Villon  to  draw  in 


286  STEVENSON 

his  chair,  and  going  to  the  sideboard,  brought  back 
two  goblets,  which  he  filled. 

"  'I  drink  your  better  fortune,'  he  said,  gravely 
touching  Villon's  cup  with  his  own. 

"  To  our  better  acquaintance,'  said  the  poet, 
growing  bold.  A  mere  man  of  the  people  would 
have  been  awed  by  the  courtesy  of  the  old  seigneur, 
but  Villon  was  hardened  in  that  matter;  he  had 
made  mirth  for  great  lords  before  now,  and  found 
them  as  black  rascals  as  himself.  And  so  he  de- 
voted himself  to  the  viands  with  a  ravenous  gusto, 
while  the  old  man,  leaning  backward,  watched  him 
with  steady,  curious  eyes. 

"  'You  have  blood  on  your  shoulder,  my  man,' 
he  said. 

"Montigny  must  have  laid  his  wet  right  hand  upon 
him  as  he  left  the  house.  He  cursed  Montigny  in 
his  heart. 

"  'It  was  none  of  my  shedding,'  he  stammered. 

'*  'I  had  not  supposed  so,'  returned  his  host  quietly. 
'A  brawl?' 

"  'Well,  something  of  that  sort,'  Villon  admitted 
with  a  quaver. 

"  'Perhaps  a  fellow  murdered?' 

"  'Oh  no,  not  murdered,'  said  the  poet,  more  and 
more  confused.  'It  was  all  fair  play — murdered  by 
accident.  I  had  no  hand  in  it,  God  strike  me  dead !' 
he  added  fervently. 

"  'One  rogue  the  fewer,  I  dare  say,'  observed  the 
master  of  the  house. 

"  'You  may  dare  to  say  that,'  agreed  Villon,  in- 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  287 

finitely  relieved.  'As  big  a  rogue  as  there  is  between 
here  and  Jerusalem.  He  turned  up  his  toes  like  a 
lamb.  But  it  was  a  nasty  thing  to  look  at.  I  dare 
say  you've  seen  dead  men  in  your  time,  my  lord?' 
he  added,  glancing  at  the  armour. 

"  'Many,'  said  the  old  man.  'I  have  followed  the 
wars,  as  you  imagine.' 

"Villon  laid  down  his  knife  and  fork,  which  he 
had  just  taken  up  again. 

"  'Were  any  of  them  bald?'  he  asked. 

"  'Oh  yes,  and  with  hair  as  white  as  mine.' 

"  'I  don't  think  I  should  mind  the  white  so  much,' 
said  Villon.  'His  was  red.'  And  he  had  a  return 
of  his  shuddering  and  tendency  to  laughter,  which 
he  drowned  with  a  great  draught  of  wine.  'I'm  a 
little  put  out  when  I  think  of  it,'  he  Went  on.  'I 
knew  him — damn  him!  And  then  the  cold  gives  a 
man  fancies — or  the  fancies  give  a  man  cold,  I  don't 
know  which.' 

"  'Have  you  any  money?'  asked  the  old  man. 

"  'I  have  one  white,'  returned  the  poet,  laughing. 
'I  got  it  out  of  a  dead  jade's  stocking  in  a  porch. 
She  was  as  dead  as  Caesar,  poor  wench,  and  as  cold 
as  a  church,  with  bits  of  ribbon  sticking  in  her  hair. 
This  is  a  hard  world  in  winter  for  wolves  and 
wenches  and  poor  rogues  like  me.' 

'  'I,'  said  the  old  man,  'am  Enguerrand  de  la 
Feuillee,  seigneur  de  Brisetout,  bailly  du  Patatrac. 
Who  and  what  may  you  be  ?' 

"Villon  rose  and  made  a  suitable  reverence.  'I 
am  called  Francis  Villon,'  he  said,  'a  poor  Master 


288  STEVENSON 

of  Arts  of  this  university.  I  know  some  Latin,  and 
a  deal  of  vice.  I  can  make  chansons,  ballades,  lais, 
virelais,  and  roundels,  and  I  am  very  fond  of  wine. 
I  was  born  in  a  garret,  and  I  shall  not  improbably 
die  upon  the  gallows.  I  may  add,  my  lord,  that  from 
this  night  forward  I  am  your  lordship's  very  ob- 
sequious servant  to  command.' 

"  'No  servant  of  mine,'  said  the  knight;  'my  guest 
for  this  evening,  and  no  more/. 

"  'A  very  grateful  guest/  said  Villon,  politely, 
and  he  drank  in  dumb  show  to  his  entertainer. 

"  'You  are  shrewd/  began  the  old  man,  tapping 
his  forehead,  'very  shrewd;  you  have  learning;  you 
are  a  clerk;  and  yet  you  take  a  small  piece  of  money 
off  a  dead  woman  in  the  street.  Is  it  not  a  kind  of 
theft?' 

"  'It  is  a  kind  of  theft  much  practised  in  the  wars, 
my  lord.' 

"  'The  wars  are  the  field  of  honour/  returned  the 
old  man  proudly.  'There  a  man  plays  his  life  upon 
the  cast ;  he  fights  in  the  name  of  his  lord  the  king, 
his  Lord  God,  and  all  their  lordships  the  holy  saints 
and  angels.' 

"  'Put  it/  said  Villon,  "that  I  were  really  a  thief, 
should  I  not  play  my  life  also,  and  against  heavier 
odds?' 

"  'For  gain  but  not  for  honour/ 

"  'Gain  ?'  repeated  Villon  with  a  shrug.  'Gain ! 
The  poor  fellow  wants  supper,  and  takes  it.  So 
does  the  soldier  in  a  campaign.  Why,  what  are  all 
these  requisitions  we  hear  so  much  about?    If  they 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  289 

are  not  gain  to  those  who  take  them,  they  are  loss 
enough  to  the  others.  The  men-at-arms  drink  by  a 
good  fire,  while  the  burgher  bites  his  nails  to  buy 
them  wine  and  wood.  I  have  seen  a  good  many 
ploughmen  swinging  on  trees  about  the  country; 
ay,  I  have  seen  thirty  on  one  elm,  and  a  very  poor 
figure  they  made ;  and  when  I  asked  some  one  how 
all  these  came  to  be  hanged,  I  was  told  it  was  be- 
cause they  could  not  scrape  together  enough  crowns 
to  satisfy  the  men-at-arms/ 

"  'These  things  are  a  necessity  of  war,  which  the 
lowborn  must  endure  with  constancy.  It  is  true  that 
some  captains  drive  overhard;  there  are  spirits  in 
every  rank  not  easily  moved  by  pity;  and  indeed 
many  follow  arms  who  are  no  better  than  brigands.' 

"  'You  see/  said  the  poet,  'you  cannot  separate 
the  soldier  from  the  brigand;  and  what  is  a  thief 
but  an  isolated  brigand  with  circumspect  manners? 
I  steal  a  couple  of  mutton  chops,  without  so  much 
as  disturbing  people's  sleep ;  the  farmer  grumbles  a 
bit,  but  sups  none  the  less  wholesomely  on  what 
remains.  You  come  up  blowing  gloriously  on  a 
trumpet,  take  away  the  whole  sheep,  and  beat  the 
farmer  pitifully  into  the  bargain.  I  have  no  trum- 
pet ;  I  am  only  Tom,  Dick,  or  Harry ;  I  am  a  rogue 
and  a  dog,  and  hanging's  too  good  for  me — with  all 
my  heart;  but  just  ask  the  farmer  which  of  us  he 
prefers,  just  find  out  which  of  us  he  lies  awake  to 
curse  on  cold  nights.' 

"  'Look  at  us  two,'  said  his  lordship.  T  am  old, 
strong,  and  honoured.    If  I  were  turned  from  my 


290  STEVENSON 

house  to-morrow,  hundreds  would  be  proud  to  shel- 
ter me.  Poor  people  would  go  out  and  pass  the 
night  in  the  streets  with  their  children,  if  I  merely 
hinted  that  I  wished  to  be  alone.  And  I  find  you 
up,  wandering  homeless,  and  picking  farthings  off 
dead  women  by  the  wayside!  I  fear  no  man  and 
nothing;  I  have  seen  you  tremble  and  lose  coun- 
tenance at  a  word.  I  wait  God's  summons  con- 
tentedly in  my  own  house,  or,  if  it  please  the  king 
to  call  me  again,  upon  the  field  of  battle.  You  look 
for  the  gallows;  a  rough,  swift  death,  without  hope 
or  honour.  Is  there  no  difference  between  these 
two?' 

"  'As  far  as  to  the  moon,'  Villon  acquiesced. 
'But  if  I  had  been  born  lord  of  Brisetout,  and  you 
had  been  the  poor  scholar  Francis,  would  the  differ- 
ence have  been  any  the  less  ?  Should  not  I  have  been 
warming  my  knees  at  this  charcoal  pan,  and  would 
not  you  have  been  groping  for  farthings  in  the 
snow?  Should  not  I  have  been  the  soldier,  and 
you  the  thief?' 

"'A  thief?'  cried  the  old  man.  'I  a  thief!  If 
you  understood  your  words,  you  would  repent  them.' 

"Villon  turned  out  his  hands  with  a  gesture  of 
inimitable  impudence.  'If  your  lordship  had  done 
me  the  honour  to  follow  my  argument !'  he  said. 

"  'I  do  you  too  much  honour  in  submitting  to 
your  presence,'  said  the  knight.  'Learn  to  curb  your 
tongue  when  you  speak  with  old  and  honourable 
men,  or  some  one  hastier  than  I  may  reprove  you 
in  a  sharper  fashion.'     And  he  rose  and  paced  the 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  291 

lower  end  of  the  apartment,  struggling  with  anger 
and  antipathy.  Villon  surreptitiously  refilled  his 
cup,  and  settled  himself  more  comfortably  in  the 
chair,  crossing  his  knees  and  leaning  his  head  upon 
one  hand  and  the  elbow  against  the  back  of  the 
chair.  He  was  now  replete  and  warm ;  and  he  was 
in  nowise  frightened  for  his  host,  having  gauged 
him  as  justly  as  was  possible  between  two  such  dif- 
ferent characters.  The  night  was  far  spent,  and  in 
a  very  comfortable  fashion  after  all;  and  he  felt 
morally  certain  of  a  safe  departure  on  the  morrow. 

"  'Tell  me  one  thing,'  said  the  old  man,  pausing 
in  his  walk.     'Are  you  really  a  thief?' 

"  T  claim  the  sacred  rights  of  hospitality/  re- 
turned the  poet.    'My  lord,  I  am.' 

"  'You  are  very  young,'  the  knight  continued. 

"  T  should  never  have  been  so  old,'  replied  Villon, 
showing  his  fingers,  'if  I  had  not  helped  myself  with 
these  ten  talents.  They  have  been  my  nursing 
mothers  and  my  nursing  fathers.' 

"  'You  may  still  repent  and  change.' 

"  T  repent  daily,'  said  the  poet.  'There  are  few 
people  more  given  to  repentance  than  poor  Francis. 
As  for  change,  let  somebody  change  my  circum- 
stances. A  man  must  continue  to  eat,  if  it  were 
only  that  he  may  continue  to  repent.' 

"  'The  change  must  begin  in  the  heart,'  returned 
the  old  man  solemnly. 

"  'My  dear  lord,'  answered  Villon,  'do  you  really 
fancy  that  I  steal  for  pleasure?  I  hate  stealing, 
like  any  other  piece  of  work  or  of  danger.     My 


292  STEVENSON 

teeth  chatter  when  I  see  a  gallows.  But  I  must  eat, 
I  must  drink,  I  must  mix  in  society  of  some  sort. 
What  the  devil !  Man  is  not  a  solitary  animal — cui 
Deus  fcominam  tradit.  Make  me  king's  pantler — 
make  me  abbot  of  St.  Denis;  make  me  bailly  of  the 
Patatrac;  and  then  I  shall  be  changed  indeed.  But 
as  long  as  you  leave  me  the  poor  scholar  Francis 
Villon,  without  a  farthing,  why,  of  course,  I  re- 
main the  same.' 

"  The  grace  of  God  is  all-powerful.' 

"  'I  should  be  a  heretic  to  question  it,'  said  Fran- 
cis. 'It  has  made  you  lord  of  Brisetout  and  bailly 
of  the  Patatrac;  it  has  given  me  nothing  but  the 
quick  wits  under  my  hat  and  these  ten  toes  upon  my 
hands.  May  I  help  myself  to  wine?  I  thank  you 
respectfully.  By  God's  grace,  you  have  a  very  su- 
perior vintage/ 

"The  lord  of  Brisetout  walked  to  and  fro  with 
his  hands  behind  his  back.  Perhaps  he  was  not  yet 
quite  settled  in  his  mind  about  the  parallel  between 
thieves  and  soldiers;  perhaps  Villon  had  interested 
him  by  some  cross-thread  of  sympathy;  perhaps  his 
wits  were  simply  muddled  by  so  much  unfamiliar 
reasoning;  but  whatever  the  cause,  he  somehow 
yearned  to  convert  the  young  man  to  a  better  way 
of  thinking,  and  could  not  make  up  his  mind  to  drive 
him  forth  again  into  the  street. 

"  'There  is  something  more  than  I  can  under- 
stand in  this,'  he  said  at  length.  'Your  mouth  is 
full  of  subtleties,  and  the  devil  has  led  you  very  far 
astray;  but  the  devil  is  only  a  very  weak  spirit  be- 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  293 

fore  God's  truth,  and  all  his  subtleties  vanish  at  a 
word  of  true  honour,  like  darkness  at  morning. 
Listen  to  me  once  more.  I  learned  long  ago  that 
a  gentleman  should  live  chivalrously  and  lovingly 
to  God,  and  the  king,  and  his  lady;  and  though  I 
have  seen  many  strange  things  done,  I  have  still 
striven  to  command  my  ways  upon  that  rule.  It  is 
not  only  written  in  all  noble  histories,  but  in  every 
man's  heart,  if  he  will  take  care  to  read.  You 
speak  of  food  and  wine,  and  I  know  very  well  that 
hunger  is  a  difficult  trial  to  endure ;  but  you  do  not 
speak  of  other  wants;  you  say  nothing  of  honour, 
of  faith  to  God  and  other  men,  of  courtesy,  of  love 
without  reproach.  It  may  be  that  I  am  not  very 
wise — and  yet  I  think  I  am — but  you  seem  to  me 
like  one  who  has  lost  his  way  and  made  a  great 
error  in  life.  You  are  attending  to  the  little  wants, 
and  you  have  totally  forgotten  the  great  and  only 
real  ones,  like  a  man  who  should  be  doctoring  tooth- 
ache on  the  Judgment  Day.  For  such  things  as 
honour  and  love  and  faith  are  not  only  nobler  than 
food  and  drink,  but  indeed  I  think  we  desire  them 
more,  and  suffer  more  sharply  for  their  absence.  I 
speak  to  you  as  I  think  you  will  most  easily  under- 
stand me.  Are  you  not,  while  careful  to  fill  your 
belly,  disregarding  another  appetite  in  your  heart, 
which  spoils  the  pleasure  of  your  life  and  keeps  you 
continually  wretched?' 

"Villon  was  sensibly  nettled  under  all  this  ser- 
monising. 'You  think  I  have  no  sense  of  honour!' 
he  cried.    'I'm  poor  enough,  God  knows !    It's  hard 


294  STEVENSON 

to  see  rich  people  with  their  gloves,  and  you'  blow- 
ing in  your  hands.  An  empty  belly  is  a  bitter  thing, 
although  you  speak  so  lightly  of  it.  If  you  had  had 
as  many  as  I,  perhaps  you  would  change  your  tune. 
Anyway  Fma  thief — make  the  most  of  that — but 
I'm  not  a  devil  from  hell,  God  strike  me  dead.  I 
wrould  have  you  to  know  I've  an  honour  of  my  own, 
as  good  as  yours,  though  I  don't  prate  about  it  all 
day  long,  as  if  it  was  a  God's  miracle  to  have  any. 
It  seems  quite  natural  to  me ;  I  keep  it  in  its  box  till 
it's  wanted.  Why  now,  look  you  here,  how  long 
have  I  been  in  this  room  with  you?  Did  you  not 
tell  me  you  were  alone  in  the  house !  Look  at  your 
gold  plate!  You're  strong,  if  you  like,  but  you're 
old  and  unarmed,  and  I  have  my  knife.  What  did 
I  want  but  a  jerk  of  the  elbow  and  here  would  have 
been  you  with  the  cold  steel  in  your  bowels,  and 
there  would  have  been  me,  linking  in  the  streets, 
with  an  armful  of  golden  cups!  Did  you  suppose 
I  hadn't  wit  enough  to  see  that?  And  I  scorned 
the  action.  There  are  your  damned  goblets,  as 
safe  as  in  a  church ;  there  are  you,  with  your  heart 
ticking  as  good  as  new ;  and  here  am  I,  ready  to  go 
out  again  as  poor  as  I  came  in,  with  my  one  white 
that  you  threw  in  my  teeth !  And  you  think  I  have 
no  sense  of  honour — God  strike  me  dead !' 

"The  old  man  stretched  out  his  right  arm.  'I  will 
tell  you  what  you  are,'  he  said.  'You  are  a  rogue, 
my  man,  an  impudent  and  black-hearted  rogue  and 
vagabond.  I  have  passed  an  hour  with  you.  Oh! 
believe  me,  I  feel  myself  disgraced !    And  you  have 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  295 

eaten  and  drunk  at  my  table.  But  now  I  am  sick  at 
your  presence ;  the  day  has  come,  and  the  night-bird 
should  be  off  to  his  roost.  Will  you  go  before,  or 
after?' 

"  'Which  you  please/  returned  the  poet,  rising.  'I 
believe  you  to  be  strictly  honourable.'  He  thought- 
fully emptied  his  cup.  'I  wish  I  could  add  you  were 
intelligent,'  he  went  on,  knocking  on  his  head  with 
his  knuckles.  'Age !  age !  the  brains  stiff  and  rheu- 
matic.' 

"The  old  man  preceded  him  from  a  point  of  self- 
respect  ;  Villon  followed,  whistling,  with  his  thumbs 
in  his  girdle. 

"  'God  pity  you,'  said  the  lord  of  Brisetout  at  the 
door. 

"  'Good-bye,  papa,'  returned  Villon  with  a  yawn. 
'Many  thanks  for  the  cold  mutton.' 

"The  door  closed  behind  him.  The  dawn  was 
breaking  over  the  white  roofs.  A  chill,  uncomfort- 
able morning  ushered  in  the  day.  Villon  stood  and 
heartily  stretched  himself  in  the  middle  of  the  road. 

"  'A  very  dull  old  gentleman,'  he  thought.  'I 
wonder  what  his  goblets  may  be  worth.'  " 


The  consummate  assurance  of  Master  Francois's 
entrance  into  the  house  of  Enguerrand  de  la  Feuillee, 
seigneur  de  Brisetout,  bailly  du  Patatrac,  and  the 
sardonic  swagger  of  his  exit  represent  traits  which, 
in  different  characters,  Stevenson  never  tired  of 


296  STEVENSON 

delineating.  Bravado  is  perhaps  the  most  frequent 
property  of  his  people.  In  his  bad  men,  like  the 
Master,  it  is  made  into  a  fascinating  vice  of  pride. 
In  his  likeable  characters  it  becomes  a  charming 
vanity.  Its  extremes  are  perhaps  in  the  Master  and 
in  Alan  Breck.  But  between  these  two  are  a  num- 
ber of  people  who  have  it  in  milder,  more  intel- 
lectual or  whimsical  form,  people  who  are  a  sort  of 
humorous  exaggeration  of  the  sentiments  of  certain 
of  his  essays.  Of  this  type  Leon  Berthelini  in 
"Providence  and  the  Guitar,"  and  Desprez  in  "The 
Treasure  of  Franchard,"  are  the  two  most  eminent 
examples. 

Monsieur  Leon  Berthelini,  strolling  player  and 
man  of  temper,  fallen  among  the  disenchantments 
of  life,  or,  more  exactly,  finding  himself  stranded  in 
the  hostile  town  of  Castel-le-Gachis,  where  the  com- 
missary of  police  is  a  boor  and  the  cafe  audiences 
unfeeling,  not  to  mention  the  odious  character  of 
the  landlord  of  the  Black  Head  Hotel,  Monsieur 
Leon  and  Elvira,  his  wife,  in  these  untoward  cir- 
cumstances, attempt  to  play  the  part  of  peripatetic 
philosophers.  At  least  Leon  does — he  has  some 
difficulty  at  first  in  converting  his  wife  to  hedonistic 
stoicism.  The  night  is  damp  and  she  fears  for  her 
voice.  Leon  is  more  successful  with  a  young  pedes- 
trian named  Stubbs,  a  Cambridge  undergraduate, 
whom  they  find  asleep  in  the  fields  to  the  west  of  the 
town.  Stubbs  is  a  good,  honest  sort,  and  even  if 
he  is  just  now  short  of  cash,  he  is  going  to  be  a 
banker.     But  for  the  present  evening  he  is  made 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  297 

to  talk  about  art  and  the  stars,  and  to  put  his  re- 
spectable profession  in  the  balance  with  Leon's. 
And  here  lies  the  point  of  the  story,  which,  like 
several  other  of  Stevenson's  moralities,  has  begun 
with  completely  humorous  unconcern,  and  will,  in 
fact,  not  once  need  to  change  the  tone  to  the  moral 
end.    Let  us  look  at  the  end. 

Madame's  artistic  fear  for  her  voice  having  be- 
come excessive,  the  trio  are  now  seeking  in  earnest 
for  some  kind  of  shelter. 

"Leon  strode  ahead  as  if  he  knew  exactly  where 
he  was  going;  the  sobs  of  Madame  were  still  faintly 
audible,  and  no  one  uttered  a  word.  A  dog  barked 
furiously  in  a  court-yard  as  they  went  by ;  then  the 
church  clock  struck  two,  and  many  domestic  clocks 
followed  or  preceded  it  in  piping  tones.  And  just 
then  Berthelini  spied  a  light.  It  burned  in  a  small 
house  on  the  outskirts  of  the  town,  and  thither  the 
party  now  directed  their  steps. 

"  'It  is  always  a  chance,'  said  Leon. 

"The  house  in  question  stood  back  from  the 
street  behind  an  open  space,  part  garden,  part  turnip 
field;  and  several  outhouses  stood  forward  from 
either  wing  at  right  angles  to  the  front.  One  of 
these  had  recently  undergone  some  change.  An 
enormous  window,  looking  towards  the  north,  had 
been  effected  in  the  wall  and  roof,  and  Leon  began 
to  hope  it  was  a  studio. 

"  Tf  it's  only  a  painter,'  he  said,  with  a  chuckle, 
'ten  to  one  we  get  as  good  a  welcome  as  we  want/ 


298  STEVENSON 

"  'I  thought  painters  were  principally  poor/  said 
Stubbs. 

"  'Ah/  cried  Leon,  'you  do  not  know  the  world 
as  I  do.    The  poorer  the  better  for  us/ 

"And  the  trio  advanced  into  the  turnip  field. 

"The  light  was  in  the  ground  floor;  as  one  win- 
dow was  brightly  illuminated  and  two  others  more 
faintly,  it  might  be  supposed  that  there  was  a  single 
lamp  in  one  corner  of  a  large  apartment;  and  a  cer- 
tain tremulousness  and  temporary  dwindling  showed 
that  a  live  fire  contributed  to  the  effect.  Jhe  sound 
of  a  voice  now  became  audible;  and  the  trespassers 
paused  to  listen.  It  was  pitched  in  a  high,  angry 
key,  but  had  still  a  good,  full,  and  masculine  note 
in  it.  The  utterance  was  voluble,  too  voluble  even 
to  be  quite  distinct;  a  stream  of  words,  rising  and 
falling,  with  ever  and  again  a  phrase  thrown  out  by 
itself,  as  if  the  speaker  reckoned  on  its  virtue. 

"Suddenly  another  voice  joined  in.  This  time 
it  was  a  woman's;  and  if  the  man  were  angry,  the 
woman  was  incensed  to  the  degree  of  fury.  There 
was  that  absolutely  blank  composure  known  to  suf- 
fering males ;  that  colourless  unnatural  speech  which 
shows  a  spirit  accurately  balanced  between  homicide 
and  hysterics;  the  tone  in  which  the  best  of  women 
sometimes  utter  words  worse  than  death  to  those 
most  dear  to  them.  If  Abstract  Bones-and-Sepulchre 
were  to  be  endowed  with  the  gift  of  speech,  thus, 
and  not  otherwise,  would  it  discourse.  Leon  was  a 
brave  man,  and  I  fear  he  was  somewhat  sceptically 
given  (he  had  been  educated  in  a  Papistical  coun- 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  299 

try),  but  the  habit  of  childhood  prevailed,  and  he 
crossed  himself  devoutly.  He  had  met  several 
women  in  his  career.  It  was  obvious  that  his  in- 
stinct had  not  deceived  him,  for  the  male  voice  broke 
forth  instantly  in  a  towering  passion. 

"The  undergraduate,  who  had  not  understood  the 
significance  of  the  woman's  contribution,  pricked  up 
his  ears  at  the  change  upon  the  man. 

"  There's  going  to  be  a  free  fight,'  he  opined. 

"There  was  another  retort  from  the  woman,  still 
calm  but  a  little  higher. 

"'Hysterics?'  asked  Leon  of  his  wife.  Ts  that 
the  stage  direction?' 

"  'How  should  I  know  ?'  returned  Elvira,  some- 
what tartly. 

"  'Oh,  woman,  woman !'  said  Leon,  beginning  to 
open  the  guitar-case.  'It  is  one  of  the  burdens  of 
my  life,  Monsieur  Stubbs;  they  support  each  other; 
they  always  pretend  there  is  no  system;  they  say 
it's  nature.  Even  Madame  Berthelini  who  is  a 
dramatic  artist !' 

"  'You  are  heartless,  Leon/  said  Elvira ;  'that 
woman  is  in  trouble.' 

"  'And  the  man,  my  angel  ?'  inquired  Berthelini, 
passing  the  ribbon  of  his  guitar.  'And  the  man, 
m'amourf 

"  'He  is  a  man/  she  answered. 

"'You  hear  that?'  said  Leon  to  Stubbs.  'It  is 
not  too  late  for  you.  Mark  the  intonation.  And 
now,'  he  continued,  'what  are  we  to  give  them?' 

"  'Are  you  going  to  sing?'  asked  Stubbs. 


300  STEVENSON 

"  'I  am  a  troubadour,'  replied  Leon.  'I  claim  a 
welcome  by  and  for  my  art.  If  I  were  a  banker 
could  I  do  as  much?' 

"  'Well,  you  wouldn't  need,  you  know,'  answered 
the  undergraduate. 

"  'Egad,'  said  Leon,  'but  that's  true.  Elvira,  that 
is  true.' 

"  'Of  course  it  is,'  she  replied.  'Did  you  not 
know  it?' 

"  'My  dear,'  answered  Leon,  impressively,  'I  know 
nothing  but  what  is  agreeable.  Even  my  knowledge 
of  life  is  a  work  of  art  superiorly  composed.  But 
what  are  we  to  give  them  ?  It  should  be  something 
appropriate.' 

"Visions  of  'Let  dogs  delight'  passed  through  the 
undergraduate's  mind;  but  it  occurred  to  him  that 
the  poetry  was  English  and  that  he  did  not  know 
the  air.     Hence  he  contributed  no  suggestion. 

"  'Something  about  our  houselessness,'  said  El- 
vira. 

"  'I  have  it,'  cried  Leon.  And  he  broke  forth  into 
a  song  of  Pierre  Dupont's : — 

"Savez-vous  oil  gite 
Mai,  ce  joli  moist 

"Elvira  joined  in;  so  did  Stubbs,  with  a  good  ear 
and  voice,  but  an  imperfect  acquaintance  with  the 
music.  Leon  and  the  guitar  were  equal  to  the  situa- 
tion. The  actor  dispensed  his  throat-notes  with 
prodigality  and  enthusiasm;  and,  as  he  looked  up 
to  heaven  in  his  heroic  way,  tossing  the  black  ring- 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  301 

lets,  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  very  stars  contributed 
a  dumb  applause  to  his  efforts,  and  the  universe  lent 
him  its  silence  for  a  chorus.  That  is  one  of  the 
best  features  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  that  they  belong 
to  everybody  in  particular;  and  a  man  like  Leon,  a 
chronic  Endymion  who  managed  to  get  along  with- 
out encouragement,  is  always  the  world's  centre  for 
himself. 

"He  alone — and  it  is  to  be  noted,  he  was  the 
worst  singer  of  the  three — took  the  music  seriously 
to  heart,  and  judged  the  serenade  from  a  high  ar- 
tistic point  of  view.  Elvira,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
preoccupied  about  their  reception;  and,  as  for 
Stubbs,  he  considered  the  whole  affair  in  the  light 
of  a  broad  joke. 

"  'Know  you  the  lair  of  May,  the  lovely  month?' 
went  the  three  voices  in  the  turnip  field. 

"The  inhabitants  were  plainly  fluttered ;  the  light 
moved  to  and  fro,  strengthening  in  one  window, 
paling  in  another;  and  then  the  door  was  thrown 
open,  and  a  man  in  a  blouse  appeared  on  the  thresh- 
old carrying  a  lamp.  He  was  a  powerful  young 
fellow,  with  bewildered  hair  and  beard,  wearing  his 
neck  open;  his  blouse  was  stained  with  oil-colours 
in  a  harlequinesque  disorder;  and  there  was  some- 
thing rural  in  the  droop  and  bagginess  of  his  belted 
trousers. 

"From  immediately  behind  him,  and  indeed  over 
his  shoulder,  a  woman's  face  looked  out  into  the 
darkness;  it  was  pale  and  a  little  weary,  although 
still  young;  it  wore  a  dwindling,  disappearing  pretti- 


302  STEVENSON 

ness,  soon  to  be  quite  gone,  and  the  expression  was 
both  gentle  and  sour,  and  reminded  one  faintly  of 
the  taste  of  certain  drugs.  For  all  that,  it  was  not 
a  face  to  dislike ;  when  the  prettiness  had  vanished, 
it  seemed  as  if  a  certain  pale  beauty  might  step  in 
to  take  its  place;  and  as  both  the  mildness  and  the 
asperity  were  characters  of  youth,  it  might  be  hoped 
that,  with  years,  both  would  merge  into  a  constant, 
brave,  and  not  unkindly  temper. 

"  'What  is  all  this  ?'  cried  the  man. 

"Leon  had  his  hat  in  his  hand  at  once.  He  came 
forward  with  his  customary  grace;  it  was  a  mo- 
ment which  would  have  earned  him  a  round  of 
cheering  on  the  stage.  Elvira  and  Stubbs  advanced 
behind  him,  like  a  couple  of  Admetus'  sheep  fol- 
lowing the  god  Apollo. 

"  'Sir/  said  Leon,  'the  hour  is  unpardonably  late, 
and  our  little  serenade  has  the  air  of  an  impertinence. 
Believe  me,  sir,  it  is  an  appeal.  Monsieur  is  an 
artist,  I  perceive.  We  are  here  three  artists  be- 
nighted and  without  shelter,  one  a  woman — a  deli- 
cate woman — in  evening  dress — in  an  interesting  sit- 
uation. This  will  not  fail  to  touch  the  woman's 
heart  of  Madame,  whom  I  perceive  indistinctly  be- 
hind Monsieur  her  husband,  and  whose  face  speaks 
eloquently  of  a  well-regulated  mind.  Ah!  Mon- 
sieur, Madame — one  generous  movement,  and  you 
make  three  people  happy !  Two  or  three  hours  be- 
side your  fire — I  ask  it  of  Monsieur  in  the  name  of 
Art — I  ask  it  of  Madame  by  the  sanctity  of  woman- 
hood/ 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  303 

"The  two,  as  by  a  tacit  consent,  drew  back  from 
the  door. 

"  'Come  in/  said  the  man. 

"  'Entrez,  Madame/  said  the  woman. 

"The  door  opened  directly  upon  the  kitchen  of 
the  house,  which  was  to  all  appearance  the  only  sit- 
ting-room. The  furniture  was  both  plain  and 
scanty;  but  there  were  one  or  two  landscapes  on 
the  wall  handsomely  framed,  as  if  they  had  already 
visited  the  committee-rooms  of  an  exhibition  and 
been  thence  extruded.  Leon  walked  up  to  the  pic- 
tures and  represented  the  part  of  a  connoisseur  be- 
fore each  in  turn,  with  his  usual  dramatic  insight 
and  force.  The  master  of  the  house,  as  if  irresistibly 
attracted,  followed  him  from  canvas  to  canvas  with 
the  lamp.  Elvira  was  led  directly  to  the  fire,  where 
she  proceeded  to  warm  herself,  while  Stubbs  stood 
in  the  middle  of  the  floor  and  followed  the  proceed- 
ings of  Leon  with  mild  astonishment  in  his  eyes. 

"  'You  should  see  them  by  daylight/  said  the 
artist. 

"  T  promise  myself  that  pleasure/  said  Leon. 
'You  possess,  sir,  if  you  will  permit  me  an  observa- 
tion, the  art  of  composition  to  a  TV 

"  'You  are  very  good/  returned  the  other.  'But 
should  you  not  draw  nearer  to  the  fire  ?' 

"  'With  all  my  heart/  said  Leon. 

"And  the  whole  party  soon  gathered  at  the  table 
over  a  hasty  and  not  an  elegant  cold  supper,  washed 
down  with  the  least  of  small  wines.  Nobody  liked 
the  meal,  but  nobody  complained;  they  put  a  good 


304  STEVENSON 

face  upon  it,  one  and  all,  and  made  a  great  clattering 
of  knives  and  forks.  To  see  Leon  eating  a  single 
cold  sausage  was  to  see  a  triumph;  by  the  time  he 
had  done  he  had  got  through  as  much  pantomime 
as  would  have  sufficed  for  a  baron  of  beef,  and  he 
had  the  relaxed  expression  of  the  over-eaten. 

"As  Elvira  had  naturally  taken  a  place  by  the  side 
of  Leon,  and  Stubbs  as  naturally,  although  I  believe 
unconsciously,  by  the  side  of  Elvira,  the  host  and 
hostess  were  left  together.  Yet  it  was  to  be  noted 
that  they  never  addressed  a  word  to  each  other, 
nor  so  much  as  suffered  their  eyes  to  meet.  The 
interrupted  skirmish  still  survived  in  ill  feeling ;  and 
the  instant  the  guests  departed  it  would  break  forth 
again  as  bitterly  as  ever.  The  talk  wandered  from 
this  to  that  subject — for  with  one  accord  the  party 
had  declared  it  was  too  late  to  go  to  bed ;  but  those 
two  never  relaxed  towards  each  other;  Goneril  and 
Regan  in  a  sisterly  tiff  were  not  more  bent  on  en- 
mity. 

"It  chanced  that  Elvira  was  so  much  tired  by  all 
the  little  excitements  of  the  night,  that  for  once  she 
laid  aside  her  company  manners,  which  were  both 
easy  and  correct,  and  in  the  most  natural  manner 
in  the  world  leaned  her  head  on  Leon's  shoulder. 
At  the  same  time,  fatigue  suggesting  tenderness, 
she  locked  the  fingers  of  her  right  hand  into  those 
of  her  husband's  left;  and,  half-closing  her  eyes, 
dozed  off  into  a  golden  borderland  between  sleep 
and  waking.  But  all  the  time  she  was  not  unaware 
of  what  was  passing,  and  saw  the  painter's  wife 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  305 

studying  her  with  looks  between  contempt  and 
envy. 

"It  occurred  to  Leon  that  his  constitution  de- 
manded the  use  of  some  tobacco;  and  he  undid  his 
ringers  from  Elvira's  in  order  to  roll  a  cigarette. 
It  was  gently  done,  and  he  took  care  that  his  in- 
dulgence should  in  no  other  way  disturb  his  wife's 
position.  But  it  seemed  to  catch  the  eye  of  the 
painter's  wife  with  a  special  significancy.  She 
looked  straight  before  her  for  an  instant,  and  then, 
with  a  swift  and  stealthy  movement,  took  hold  of 
her  husband's  hand  below  the  table.  Alas!  she 
might  have  spared  herself  the  dexterity.  For  the 
poor  fellow  was  so  overcome  by  this  caress  that  he 
stopped  with  his  mouth  open  in  the  middle  of  a 
word,  and  by  the  expression  of  his  face  plainly  de- 
clared to  all  the  company  that  his  thoughts  had  been 
diverted  into  softer  channels. 

"If  it  had  not  been  rather  amiable,  it  would  have 
been  absurdly  droll.  His  wife  at  once  withdrew 
her  touch;  but  it  was  plain  she  had  to  exert  some 
force.  Thereupon  the  young  man  coloured  and 
looked  for  a  moment  beautiful. 

"Leon  and  Elvira  both  observed  the  by-play,  and 
a  shock  passed  from  one  to  the  other ;  for  they  were 
inveterate  match-makers,  especially  between  those 
who  were  already  married. 

"  T  beg  your  pardon,'  said  Leon,  suddenly.  'I 
see  no  use  in  pretending.  Before  we  came  in  here 
we  heard  sounds  indicating — if  I  may  so  express 
myself — an  imperfect  harmony.' 


306  STEVENSON 

"  'Sir — ,'  began  the  man. 

"But  the  woman  was  beforehand. 

"  'It  is  quite  true,'  she  said.  'I  see  no  cause  to  be 
ashamed.  If  my  husband  is  mad  I  shall  at  least  do 
my  utmost  to  prevent  the  consequences.  Picture  to 
yourself,  Monsieur  and  Madame,'  she  went  on,  for 
she  passed  Stubbs  over,  'that  this  wretched  person — 
a  dauber,  an  incompetent,  not  fit  to  be  a  sign-painter 
— receives  this  morning  an  admirable  offer  from  an 
uncle — an  uncle  of  my  own,  my  mother's  brother, 
and  tenderly  beloved — of  a  clerkship  with  nearly  a 
hundred  and  fifty  pounds  a  year,  and  that  he — pic- 
ture to  yourself! — he  refuses  it!  Why?  For  the 
sake  of  Art,  he  says.  Look  at  his  art,  I  say — look 
at  it !  Is  it  fit  to  be  seen  ?  Ask  him — is  it  fit  to  be 
sold?  And  it  is  for  this,  Monsieur  and  Madame, 
that  he  condemns  me  to  the  most  deplorable  exist- 
ence, without  luxuries,  without  comforts,  in  a  vile 
suburb  of  a  country  town.  O  non !'  she  cried,  'non 
— je  ne  me  tairai  pas — c'est  plus  fort  que  moi!  I 
take  these  gentlemen  and  this  lady  for  judges — is 
this  kind?  is  it  decent?  is  it  manly?  Do  I  not 
deserve  better  at  his  hands  after  having  married  him 
and' — (a  visible  hitch) — 'done  everything  in  the 
world  to  please  him?' 

"I  doubt  if  there  were  ever  a  more  embarrassed 
company  at  a  table ;  every  one  looked  like  a  fool ;  and 
the  husband  like  the  biggest. 

"  'The  art  of  Monsieur,  however/  said  Elvira, 
breaking  the  silence,  'is  not  wanting  in  distinction.' 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  307 

"  'It  has  this  distinction/  said  the  wife,  'that  no- 
body will  buy  it.' 

"  'I  should  have  supposed  a  clerkship — '  began 
Stubbs. 

"  'Art  is  Art,'  swept  in  Leon.  'I  salute  Art.  It 
is  the  beautiful,  the  divine;  it  is  the  spirit  of  the 
world,  and  the  pride  of  life.  But — ■  And  the 
actor  paused. 

"  'A  clerkship — '  began  Stubbs. 

"  I'll  tell  you  what  it  is,'  said  the  painter.  'I  am 
an  artist,  and  as  this  gentleman  says,  Art  is  this  and 
the  other;  but  of  course,  if  my  wife  is  going  to 
make  my  life  a  piece  of  perdition  all  day  long,  I  pre- 
fer to  go  and  drown  myself  out  of  hand.' 

"  'Go!'  said  his  wife.    'I  should  like  to  see  you!' 

"  'I  was  going  to  say,'  resumed  Stubbs,  'that  a 
fellow  may  be  a  clerk  and  paint  almost  as  much  as 
he  likes.  I  know  a  fellow  in  a  bank  who  makes  cap- 
ital water-colour  sketches;  he  even  sold  one  for 
seven-and-six.' 

"To  both  the  women  this  seemed  a  plank  of 
safety;  each  hopefully  interrogated  the  countenance 
of  her  lord;  even  Elvira,  an  artist  herself! — but 
indeed  there  must  be  something  permanently  mer- 
cantile in  the  female  nature.  The  two  men  ex- 
changed a  glance ;  it  was  tragic ;  not  otherwise  might 
two  philosophers  salute,  as  at  the  end  of  a  laborious 
life  each  recognised  that  he  was  still  a  mystery  to 
his  disciples. 

"Leon  arose. 


308  STEVENSON 

"  'Art  is  Art/  he  repeated  sadly.  'It  is  not  water- 
colour  sketches,  nor  practising  on  a  piano.  It  is  a 
life  to  be  lived/ 

"  'And  in  the  meantime  people  starve !'  observed 
the  woman  of  the  house.  'If  that's  a  life,  it  is  not 
one  for  me/ 

"  'I'll  tell  you  what,'  burst  forth  Leon ;  'you, 
Madame,  go  into  another  room  and  talk  it  over  with 
my  wife;  and  I'll  stay  here  and  talk  it  over  with 
your  husband.  It  may  come  to  nothing,  but  let's 
try.' 

"  'I  am  very  willing,'  replied  the  young  woman ; 
and  she  proceeded  to  light  a  candle.  'This  way  if 
you  please.'  And  she  led  Elvira  upstairs  into  a  bed- 
room. 'The  fact  is,'  said  she,  sitting  down,  'that 
my  husband  cannot  paint.' 

"  'No  more  can  mine  act,'  replied  Elvira. 

"  'I  should  have  thought  he  could,'  returned  the 
other;  'he  seems  clever.' 

"  'He  is  so,  and  the  best  of  men  besides,'  said 
Elvira ;  'but  he  cannot  act.' 

"  'At  least  he  is  not  a  sheer  humbug  like  mine ; 
he  can  at  least  sing.' 

"  'You  mistake  Leon,'  returned  his  wife,  warmly. 
'He  does  not  even  pretend  to  sing;  he  has  too  fine 
a  taste;  he  does  so  for  a  living.  And  believe  me, 
neither  of  the  men  are  humbugs.  They  are  people 
with  a  mission — which  they  cannot  carry  out.' 

"  'Humbug  or  not,'  replied  the  other,  'you  came 
very  near  passing  the  night  in  the  fields;  and,  for 
my  part,  I  live  in  terror  of  starvation.     I  should 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  309 

think  it  was  a  man's  mission  to  think  twice  about  his 
wife.  But  it  appears  not.  Nothing  is  their  mission 
but  to  play  the  fool.  Oh !'  she  broke  out,  'is  it  not 
something  dreary  to  think  of  that  man  of  mine? 
If  he  could  only  do  it,  who  would  care?  But  no — 
not  he — no  more  than  I  can !' 

"  'Have  you  any  children  ?'  asked  Elvira. 

"  'No ;  but  then  I  may/ 

"  'Children  change  so  much,'  said  Elvira,  with  a 
sigh. 

"And  just  then  from  the  room  below  there  flew 
up  a  sudden  snapping  cord  on  the  guitar;  one  fol- 
lowed after  another;  then  the  voice  of  Leon  joined 
in ;  and  there  was  an  air  being  played  and  sung  that 
stopped  the  speech  of  the  two  women.  The  wife  of 
the  painter  stood  like  a  person  transfixed;  Elvira, 
looking  into  her  eyes,  could  see  all  manner  of  beau- 
tiful memories  and  kind  thoughts  that  were  passing 
in  and  out  of  her  soul  with  every  note;  it  was  a 
piece  of  her  youth  that  went  before  her;  a  green 
French  plain,  the  smell  of  apple-flowers,  the  far 
and  shining  ringlets  of  a  river,  and  the  words  and 
presence  of  love. 

"  'Leon  has  hit  the  nail/  thought  Elvira  to  her- 
self, T  wonder  how/ 

"The  how  was  plain  enough.  Leon  had  asked  the 
painter  if  there  were  no  air  connected  with  court- 
ship and  pleasant  times;  and  having  learned  what 
he  wished,  and  allowed  an  interval  to  pass,  he  had 
soared  forth  into 


310  STEVENSON 

"O  mon  amante, 
O  mon  desir, 
Sachons  cueillir 

L'heure  charmante! 


tc  r 


'Pardon  me,  Madame/  said  the  painter's  wife, 
'your  husband  sings  admirably  well.' 

"  'He  sings  that  with  some  feeling,'  replied  El- 
vira, critically,  although  she  was  a  little  moved 
herself,  for  the  song  cut  both  ways  in  the  upper 
chamber ;  'but  it  is  as  an  actor  and  not  as  a  musician.' 

"  'Life  is  very  sad,'  said  the  other;  'it  so  wastes 
away  under  one's  fingers.' 

"  'I  have  not  found  it  so,'  replied  Elvira.  'I 
think  the  good  parts  of  it  last  and  grow  greater  every 
day.' 

"  'Frankly,  how  would  you  advise  me  ?' 

"  'Frankly  I  would  let  my  husband  do  what  he 
wished.  He  is  obviously  a  very  loving  painter ;  you 
have  not  yet  tried  him  as  a  clerk.  And  you  know — 
if  it  were  only  as  the  possible  father  of  your  chil- 
dren— it  is  as  well  to  keep  him  at  his  best.' 

"  'He  is  an  excellent  fellow,'  said  the  wife. 

"They  kept  it  up  till  sunrise  with  music  and  all 
manner  of  good-fellowship;  and  at  sunrise,  while 
the  sky  was  still  temperate  and  clear,  they  separated 
on  the  threshold  with  a  thousand  excellent  wishes 
for  each  other's  welfare.  Castel-le-Gachis  was  be- 
ginning to  send  up  its  smoke  against  the  golden 
East;  and  the  church  bell  was  ringing  six. 

"  'My  guitar  is  a  familiar  spirit,'  said  Leon,  as  he 


THE   MORAL   FABLES  311 

and  Elvira  took  the  nearest  way  toward  the  inn; 
'it  resuscitated  a  Commissary,  created  an  English 
tourist,  and  reconciled  a  man  and  wife/ 

"Stubbs,  on  his  part,  went  off  into  the  morning 
with  reflections  of  his  own. 

"  They  are  all  mad/  thought  he,  'all  mad — but 
wonderfully  decent/  " — "Providence  and  the  Gui- 
tar," New  Arabian  Nights. 

This  story,  which  so  directly  reflects  the  argu- 
ments of  "An  Apology  for  Idlers,"  as  well  as  Ste- 
venson's own  experiences  in  regard  to  the  family 
profession,  might  well  be  called  an  "Idyll  for  Op- 
timists." "Even  my  knowledge  of  life  is  a  work 
of  art  superiorly  composed,"  says  Leon.  And  some- 
where else  Stevenson  remarks  characteristically,  "I 
would  do  nothing  that  I  cannot  do  smiling."  This 
selective  or  creative  optimism  is  the  very  opposite 
of  going  blind  to  the  facts.  It  implies  an  intense 
realization  of  the  other  possible  judgments  in  the 
case  and  a  careful  choice — some  would  say  a  per- 
verse choice.  At  all  events,  Stevenson's  optimism 
never  lacks  humor.  It  pokes  fun  at  itself  and  keeps 
perfectly  sane  in  the  midst  of  its  own  extravagance. 
For  Stevenson  is  a  critic  of  optimism  as  well  as  an 
optimist. 

VI 

There  is  another  yarn,  written  in  1883,  five  years 
later,  where  this  critical  philosophy  (gleanings  from 
Epictetus,  if  you  like)  is  put  into  narrative  form, 


312  STEVENSON 

an  extravaganza  called  "The  Treasure  of  Fran- 
chard."  Desprez,  the  sublimely  ridiculous  phan- 
tasist,  is  one  more  of  Stevenson's  insuppressibles. 
He  is  a  theorist,  especially  of  optimisms,  but  he  has 
at  his  elbow  an  admirable  imp  who  pricks  his  in- 
flations as  often  as  they  swell.  Desprez  and  Jean- 
Marie  are  sublime  theory  and  natural  sense,  and  it  is 
hard  to  say  which  is  the  more  captivating  reasoner. 
Jean-Marie,  a  waif  whom  Desprez  has  adopted, 
grows  up  at  the  doctor's  elbow  and  learns  from 
theory.  One  of  the  first  things  he  learns  is  that 
it  is  wrong  to  steal — though  he  himself  has  been 
forced  to  steal  in  order  to  keep  alive.  Here  is  a  bit 
of  their  ethical  dialogue  on  a  morning  when  the 
doctor  has  risen  early  only  to  find  Jean-Marie  up 
before  him. 

"'And  why  do  you  rise  early  in  the  morning?' 
he  pursued. 

"Jean-Marie,  after  a  long  silence,  professed  that 
he  hardly  knew. 

"  'You  hardly  know  ?'  repeated  Desprez.  'We 
hardly  know  anything,  my  man,  until  we  try  to 
learn.  Interrogate  your  consciousness.  Come, 
push  me  this  inquiry  home.    Do  you  like  it?' 

"  'Yes,'  said  the  boy  slowly;  'yes,  I  like  it.' 

"  'And  why  do  you  like  it  ?'  continued  the  Doctor. 

'"(We  are  now  pursuing  the  Socratic  method.) 
Why  do  you  like  it?' 

"  'It  is  quiet,'  answered  Jean-Marie ;  'and  I  have 
nothing  to  do;  and  then  I  feel  as  if  I  were  good.' 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  313 

"Doctor  Desprez  took  a  seat  on  the  post  at  the 
opposite  side.  He  was  beginning  to  take  an  interest 
in  the  talk,  for  the  boy  plainly  thought  before  he 
spoke,  and  tried  to  answer  truly.  'It  appears  you 
have  a  taste  for  feeling  good,'  said  the  Doctor. 
'Now,  there  you  puzzle  me  extremely ;  for  I  thought 
you  said  you  were  a  thief;  and  the  two  are  incom- 
patible.' 

"  'Is  it  very  bad  to  steal  ?'  asked  Jean-Marie. 

"  'Such  is  the  general  opinion,  little  boy/  replied 
the  Doctor. 

"  'No ;  but  I  mean  as  I  stole,'  exclaimed  the  other. 
Tor  I  had  no  choice.  I  think  it  is  surely  right  to 
have  bread;  it  must  be  right  to  have  bread,  there 
comes  so  plain  a  want  of  it.  And  then  they  beat  me 
cruelly  if  I  returned  with  nothing/  he  added.  'I 
was  not  ignorant  of  right  and  wrong;  for  before 
that  I  had  been  well  taught  by  a  priest,  who  was 
very  kind  to  me/  (The  Doctor  made  a  horrible 
grimace  at  the  word  'priest/)  'But  it  seemed  to 
me,  when  one  had  nothing  to  eat  and  was  beaten,  it 
was  a  different  affair.  I  would  not  have  stolen  for 
tartlets,  I  believe;  but  any  one  would  steal  for 
baker's  bread.' 

"  'And  so  I  suppose,'  said  the  Doctor,  with  a  rising 
sneer,  'you  prayed  God  to  forgive  you,  and  ex- 
plained the  case  to  Him  at  length.' 

"  'Why,  sir?'  asked  Jean-Marie.     'I  do  not  see.' 

"  'Your  priest  would  see,  however,'  retorted  Des- 
prez. 

"  'Would  he  ?'  asked  the  boy,  troubled  for  the  first 


314  STEVENSON 

time.  'I  should  have  thought  God  would  have 
known.' 

"  'Eh?'  snarled  the  Doctor. 

"  'I  should  have  thought  God  would  have  under- 
stood me/  replied  the  other.  'You  do  not,  I  see; 
but  then  it  was  God  that  made  me  think  so,  was  it 
not?'" 

Especially  does  Jean-Marie  learn  from  this  rati- 
ocinator  of  Grez  (Stevenson  has  most  charmingly 
framed  the  legend  among  his  early  haunts)  all  about 
the  blessings  of  simple  forest  life  as  compared  with 
the  luxuries  of  Paris.  Desprez  does  not  dare  to 
live  in  Paris  because  of  his  bibulous  and  spendthrift 
propensities.  Forced  to  live  in  Grez,  it  is  the  law 
of  golden  mediocrity  as  laid  down  by  the  ancients, 
to  whom  it  was  given  to  do  nothing  too  much,  that 
forms  the  basis  of  his  creed.  But  he  never  wishes 
to  be  taken  literally  or  denied  the  chance  of  ex- 
ceptions. Jean-Marie,  however,  transforms  his 
ratiocinations  so  rapidly  into  natural  sense  and 
sticks  to  that  so  tenaciously,  that  the  doctor  is  not 
wholly  pleased  with  the  result.  The  trouble  is  that 
Jean-Marie's  logic,  which  has  an  unanswerable 
naivete,  does  not  leave  room  for  that  play  of  fancy 
which,  in  the  doctor's  enjoyable  optimisms,  is  a 
most  essential  element. 

So,  when  it  happens  that  Doctor  Desprez,  search- 
ing for  herbs  to  study  for  his  "Comparative  Pharma- 
copoeia," discovers  the  legendary  treasure  of  Fran- 
chard — plates  of  gold  and  a  huge  coffer — and  when 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  315 

his  imagination,  instantly  transcending  all  his  doc- 
trines of  golden  mediocrity,  soars  Paris-ward  bear- 
ing Anastasie  his  wife  and  Jean-Marie  to  the 
heights  of  social  grandeur,  the  imp  suffers  a  great 
disillusionment.  He  does  the  one  practical  and  use- 
ful thing.  He  again  pricks  the  inflation — that  is, 
he  steals  the  treasure.  This  is  not  the  end  of  the 
story,  of  course;  but  it  is  a  climax  after  which 
nothing  matters.  And  I  am  not  sure  but  that  it  is 
a  climax  of  comic  proportion  such  as  you  will  hardly 
find  outside  of  Moliere. 

Here  is  the  doctor  in  the  morning,  the  sublime 
sophister  whirling  himself  superiorly  in  the  air  on 
his  pinions  of  fancy  as  he  and  Jean-Marie,  actually 
in  their  two-wheeled  noddy,  pitch  and  jerk  along  the 
road  toward  Franchard.  Desprez  is  giving  him  a 
history  of  the  place. 

"  'Singular  being !'  said  Desprez.  'But  I  divagate 
(I  perceive  in  a  thousand  ways  that  I  grow  old). 
Franchard  was  at  length  destroyed  in  the  English 
wars,  the  same  that  levelled  Grez.  But — here  is 
the  point — the  hermits  (  for  there  were  already  more 
than  one)  had  foreseen  the  danger  and  carefully 
concealed  the  sacrificial  vessels.  These  vessels  were 
of  monstrous  value,  Jean-Marie — monstrous  value 
— priceless,  we  may  say;  exquisitely  worked,  of 
exquisite  material.  And  now,  mark  me,  they  have 
never  been  found.  In  the  reign  of  Louis  Quatorze 
some  fellows  were  digging  hard  by  the  ruins.  Sud- 
denly— tock! — the    spade    hit    upon    an    obstacle. 


316  STEVENSON 

Imagine  the  men  looking  one  to  another;  imagine 
how  their  hearts  bounded,  how  their  colour  came 
and  went.  It  was  a  coffer,  and  in  Franchard  the 
place  of  buried  treasure.  They  tore  it  open  like 
famished  beasts.  Alas!  it  was  not  the  treasure; 
only  some  priestly  robes,  which,  at  the  touch  of  the 
eating  air,  fell  upon  themselves  and  instantly  wasted 
into  dust.  The  perspiration  of  these  good  fellows 
turned  cold  upon  them,  Jean-Marie.  I  will  pledge 
my  reputation,  if  there  was  anything  like  a  cutting 
wind,  one  or  other  had  a  pneumonia  for  his  trouble.' 

"  'I  should  like  to  have  seen  them  turning  into 
dust/  said  Jean-Marie.  'Otherwise,  I  should  not 
have  cared  so  greatly.' 

"  'You  have  no  imagination,'  cried  the  Doctor. 
'Picture  to  yourself  the  scene.  Dwell  on  the  idea 
— a  great  treasure  lying  in  the  earth  for  centuries : 
the  material  for  a  giddy,  copious,  opulent  existence 
not  employed;  dresses  and  exquisite  pictures  un- 
seen; the  swiftest  galloping  horses  not  stirring  a 
hoof,  arrested  by  a  spell;  women  with  the  beautiful 
faculty  of  smiles,  not  smiling;  cards,  dice,  opera 
singing,  orchestras,  castles,  beautiful  parks  and  gar- 
dens, big  ships  with  a  tower  of  sailcloth,  all  lying 
unborn  in  a  coffin — and  the  stupid  trees  growing 
overhead  in  the  sunlight,  year  after  year.  The 
thought  drives  one  frantic' 

"  'It  is  only  money,'  replied  Jean-Marie.  'It 
would  do  harm.' 

"  'O  come !'  cried  Desprez,  'that  is  philosophy ;  it 
is  all  very  fine,  but  not  to  the  point  just  now.    And 


THE   MORAL   FABLES  317 

besides,  it  is  not  "only  money,"  as  you  call  it;  there 
are  works  of  art  in  the  question;  the  vessels  were 
carved.  You  speak  like  a  child.  You  weary  me 
exceedingly,  quoting  my  words  out  of  all  logical 
connection,  like  a  parroquet.' 

"  'And  at  any  rate  we  have  nothing  to  do  with 
it,'  returned  the  boy  submissively. 

"They  struck  the  Route  Ronde  at  that  moment; 
and  the  sudden  change  of  the  rattling  causeway  com- 
bined, with  the  Doctor's  irritation,  to  keep  him  silent. 
The  noddy  jigged  along;  the  trees  went  by,  looking 
on  silently,  as  if  they  had  something  on  their  minds. 
The  Quadrilateral  was  passed;  then  came  Fran- 
chard.  They  put  up  the  horse  at  the  little  solitary 
inn,  and  went  forth  strolling.  The  gorge  was  dyed 
deeply  with  heather;  the  rocks  and  birches  standing 
luminous  in  the  sun.  A  great  humming  of  bees 
about  the  flowers  disposed  Jean-Marie  to  sleep,  and 
he  sat  down  against  a  clump  of  heather,  while  the 
Doctor  went  briskly  to  and  fro,  with  quick  turns, 
culling  his  simples. 

"The  boy's  head  had  fallen  a  little  forward,  his 
eyes  were  closed,  his  fingers  had  fallen  lax  about  his 
knees,  when  a  sudden  cry  called  him  to  his  feet. 
It  was  a  strange  sound,  thin  and  brief;  it  fell  dead, 
and  silence  returned  as  though  it  had  never  been 
interrupted.  He  had  not  recognised  the  Doctor's 
voice ;  but,  as  there  was  no  one  else  in  all  the  valley, 
it  was  plainly  the  Doctor  who  had  given  utterance 
to  the  sound.  He  looked  right  and  left,  and  there 
was  Desprez,  standing  in  a  niche  between  two  boul- 


318  STEVENSON 

ders,  and  looking  round  on  his  adopted  son  with  a 
countenance  as  white  as  paper. 

"  'A  viper !'  cried  Jean-Marie,  running  towards 
him.    'A  viper !    You  are  bitten !' 

"The  Doctor  came  down  heavily  out  of  the  cleft, 
and  advanced  in  silence  to  meet  the  boy,  whom  he 
took  roughly  by  the  shoulder. 

"  T  have  found  it/  he  said  with  a  gasp. 

"  ' A  plant  ?'  asked  Jean-Marie. 

"Desprez  had  a  fit  of  unnatural  gaiety,  which  the 
rocks  took  up  and  mimicked.  'A  plant !'  he  repeated 
scornfully.  'Well — yes — a  plant.  And  here,'  he 
added  suddenly,  showing  his  right  hand,  which  he 
had  hitherto  concealed  behind  his  back — 'here  is  one 
of  the  bulbs.' 

"Jean-Marie  saw  a  dirty  platter,  coated  with  earth. 
That?'  said  he.  Tt  is  a  plate!' 
fIt  is  a  coach  and  horses/  cried  the  Doctor. 
'Boy/  he  continued,  growing  warmer,  T  plucked 
away  a  great  pad  of  moss  from  between  these  boul- 
ders, and  disclosed  a  crevice ;  and  when  I  looked  in, 
what  do  you  suppose  I  saw  ?  I  saw  a  house  in  Paris 
with  a  court  and  garden,  I  saw  my  wife  shining  with 
diamonds,  I  saw  myself  a  deputy,  I  saw  you — well, 
I — saw  your  future/  he  concluded,  rather  feebly. 
'I  have  just  discovered  America/  he  added. 

"  'But  what  is  it?'  asked  the  boy. 

"  'The  Treasure  of  Franchard/  cried  the  Doctor; 
and,  throwing  his  brown  straw  hat  upon  the  ground, 
he  whooped  like  an  Indian  and  sprang  upon  Jean- 
Marie,  whom  he  suffocated  with  embraces  and  be- 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  319 

dewed  with  tears.  Then  he  flung  himself  down 
among  the  heather  and  once  more  laughed  until  the 
valley  rang." 

Desprez  decides  to  telegraph  for  his  brother-in- 
law  Casimir — the  unromantic,  level-headed  busi- 
ness man.  So  they  return  with  the  treasure  through 
the  forest  by  way  of  Fontainebleau,  Desprez  im- 
proving his  new  philosophy  with  every  mile,  and 
raised,. if  that  were  possible,  slightly  above  the  acme 
of  his  own  temperament  by  a  bottle  of  English  ale 
drunk  at  an  inn. 

"  'Beautiful  forest/  he  cried,  'farewell!  Though 
called  to  other  scenes,  I  will  not  forget  thee.  Thy 
name  is  graven  in  my  heart.  Under  the  influence 
of  prosperity  I  become  dithyrambic,  Jean-Marie. 
Such  is  the  impulse  of  the  natural  soul;  such  was 
the  constitution  of  primaeval  man.  And  I — well,  I 
will  not  refuse  the  credit — I  have  preserved  my 
youth  like  a  virginity;  another,  who  should  have 
led  the  same  snoozing,  countrified  existence  for 
these  years,  another  had  become  rusted,  become 
stereotype;  but  I,  I  praise  my  happy  constitution, 
retain  the  spring  unbroken.  Fresh  opulence  and  a 
new  sphere  of  duties  find  me  unabated  in  ardour 
and  only  more  mature  by  knowledge.  For  this 
prospective  change,  Jean-Marie — it  may  probably 
have  shocked  you.  Tell  me  now,  did  it  not  strike 
you  as  an  inconsistency?  Confess — it  is  useless  to 
dissemble — it  pained  you  ?' 


320  STEVENSON 

"  'Yes,'  said  the  boy. 

"  'You  see,'  returned  the  Doctor,  with  sublime 
fatuity,  'I  read  your  thoughts!  Nor  am  I  sur- 
prised— your  education  is  not  yet  complete;  the 
higher  duties  of  men  have  not  been  yet  presented  to 
you  fully.  A  hint — till  we  have  leisure — must  suffice. 
Now  that  I  am  once  more  in  possession  of  a  modest 
competence;  now  that  I  have  so  long  prepared  my- 
self in  silent  meditation,  it  becomes  my  superior  duty 
to  proceed  to  Paris.  My  scientific  training,  my  un- 
doubted command  of  language,  mark  me  out  for  the 
service  of  my  country.  Modesty  in  such  a  case 
would  be  a  snare.  If  sin  were  a  philosophical  ex- 
pression, I  should  call  it  sinful.  A  man  must  not 
deny  his  manifest  abilities,  for  that  is  to  evade  his 
obligations.  I  must  be  up  and  doing;  I  must  be  no 
skulker  in  life's  battle.' 

"So  he  rattled  on,  copiously  greasing  the  joint 
of  his  inconsistency  with  words;  while  the  boy 
listened  silently,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  horse,  his 
mind  seething.  It  was  all  lost  eloquence;  no  array 
of  words  could  unsettle  a  belief  of  Jean-Marie's; 
and  he  drove  into  Fontainebleau  filled  with  pity, 
horror,  indignation,  and  despair. 

"In  the  town  Jean-Marie  was  kept  a  fixture  on 
the  driving-seat,  to  guard  the  treasure;  while  the 
Doctor,  with  a  singular,  slightly  tipsy  airiness  of 
manner,  fluttered  in  and  out  of  cafes,  where  he 
shook  hands  with  garrison  officers,  and  mixed  an 
absinthe  with  the  nicety  of  old  experience;  in  and 
out  of  shops,  from  which  he  returned  laden  with 


THE    MORAL    FABLES  321 

costly  fruits,  real  turtle,  a  magnificent  piece  of  silk 
for  his  wife,  a  preposterous  cane  for  himself,  and 
a  kepi  of  the  newest  fashion  for  the  boy;  in  and 
out  of  the  telegraph  office,  whence  he  despatched 
his  telegram,  and  where  three  hours  later  he  received 
an  answer  promising  a  visit  on  the  morrow;  and 
generally  pervaded  Fontainebleau  with  the  first  fine 
aroma  of  his  divine  good  humour. 

"The  sun  was  very  low  when  they  set  forth  again ; 
the  shadows  of  the  forest  trees  extended  across  the 
broad  white  road  that  led  them  home ;  the  penetrat- 
ing odour  of  the  evening  wood  had  already  arisen, 
like  a  cloud  of  incense,  from  that  broad  field  of  tree- 
tops;  and  even  in  the  streets  of  the  town,  where  the 
air  had  been  baked  all  day  between  white  walls,  it 
came  in  whiffs  and  pulses,  like  a  distant  music. 
Half-way  home,  the  last  gold  flicker  vanished  from 
a  great  oak  upon  the  left ;  and  when  they  came  forth 
beyond  the  borders  of  the  wood,  the  plain  was  al- 
ready sunken  in  pearly  greyness,  and  a  great,  pale 
moon  came  swinging  skyward  through  the  filmy 
poplars. 

"The  Doctor  sang,  the  Doctor  whistled,  the  Doc- 
tor talked.  He  spoke  of  the  woods,  and  the  wars, 
and  the  deposition  of  dew;  he  brightened  and  bab- 
bled of  Paris ;  he  soared  into  cloudy  bombast  on  the 
glories  of  the  political  arena.  All  was  to  be  changed ; 
as  the  day  departed,  it  took  with  it  the  vestiges  of 
an  outworn  existence,  and  to-morrow's  sun  was  to 
inaugurate  the  new.  'Enough/  he  cried,  'of  this  life 
of  maceration!'    His  wife  (still  beautiful,  or  he  was 


322  STEVENSON 

sadly  partial)  was  to  be  no  longer  buried ;  she  should 
now  shine  before  society.  Jean-Marie  would  find 
the  world  at  his  feet;  the  roads  open  to  success, 
wealth,  honour,  and  posthumous  renown.  'And 
O,  by  the  way/  said  he,  'for  God's  sake  keep  your 
tongue  quiet!  You  are,  of  course,  a  very  silent 
fellow;  it  is  a  quality  I  gladly  recognise  in  you — 
silence,  golden  silence!  But  this  is  a  matter  of 
gravity.  No  word  must  get  abroad;  none  but  the 
good  Casimir  is  to  be  trusted;  we  shall  probably 
dispose  of  the  vessels  in  England/ 

"  'But  are  they  not  even  ours?'  the  boy  said,  al- 
most with  a  sob — it  was  the  only  time  he  had  spoken. 

"  'Ours  in  this  sense,  that  they  are  nobody  else's/ 
replied  the  Doctor.  'But  the  State  would  have  some 
claim.  If  they  were  stolen,  for  instance,  we  should 
be  unable  to  demand  their  restitution;  we  should 
have  no  title ;  we  should  be  unable  even  to  communi- 
cate with  the  police.  Such  is  the  monstrous  condi- 
tion of  the  law.1  It  is  a  mere  instance  of  what  re- 
mains to  be  done,  of  the  injustices  that  may  yet  be 
righted  by  an  ardent,  active,  and  philosophical  dep- 
uty/ 

"Jean-Marie  put  his  faith  in  Madame  Desprez; 
and  as  they  drove  forwards  down  the  road  from 
Bourron,  between  the  rustling  poplars,  he  prayed 
in  his  teeth,  and  whipped  up  the  horse  to  an  unusual 
speed.  Surely,  as  soon  as  they  arrived,  madame 
would  assert  her  character,  and  bring  this  waking 
nightmare  to  an  end. 

1  Let  it  be  so  for  my  tale. 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  323 

"Their  entrance  into  Grez  was  heralded  and 
accompanied  by  a  most  furious  barking;  all  the 
dogs  in  the  village  seemed  to  smell  the  treasure  in 
the  noddy.  But  there  was  no  one  in  the  street,  save 
three  lounging  landscape  painters  at  Tentaillon's 
door.  Jean-Marie  opened  the  green  gate  and  led 
in  the  horse  and  carriage;  and  almost  at  the  same 
moment  Madame  Desprez  came  to  the  kitchen 
threshold  with  a  lighted  lantern ;  for  the  moon  was 
not  yet  high  enough  to  clear  the  garden  walls. 

"  'Close  the  gates,  Jean-Marie !'  cried  the  Doctor, 
somewhat  unsteadily  alighting.  'Anastasie,  where 
is  Aline?' 

"  'She  has  gone  to  Montereau  to  see  her  parents/ 
said  madame. 

"  'All  is  for  the  best  F  exclaimed  the  Doctor  fer- 
vently. 'Here,  quick,  come  near  to  me;  I  do  not 
wish  to  speak  too  loud/  he  continued.  'Darling, 
we  are  wealthy!' 

"  'Wealthy!'  repeated  the  wife. 

"  'I  have  found  the  treasure  of  Franchard,'  re- 
plied her  husband.  'See,  here  are  the  first  fruits; 
a  pineapple,  a  dress  for  my  ever-beautiful — it  will 
suit  her — trust  a  husband's,  trust  a  lover's,  taste! 
Embrace  me,  darling !  This  grimy  episode  is  over ; 
the  butterfly  unfolds  its  painted  wings.  To-morrow 
Casimir  will  come ;  in  a  week  we  may  be  in  Paris — 
happy  at  last!  You  shall  have  diamonds.  Jean- 
Marie,  take  it  out  of  the  boot,  with  religious  care, 
and  bring  it  piece  by  piece  into  the  dining-room.  We 
shall  have  plate  at  table!   Darling,  hasten  and  pre- 


324  STEVENSON 

pare  this  turtle;  it  will  be  a  whet — it  will  be  an 
addition  to  our  meagre  ordinary.  I  myself  will  pro- 
ceed to  the  cellar.  We  shall  have  a  bottle  of  that 
little  Beaujolais  you  like,  and  finish  with  the  Her- 
mitage; there  are  still  three  bottles  left.  Worthy 
wine  for  a  worthy  occasion/ 

"  'But,  my  husband ;  you  put  me  in  a  whirl,'  she 
cried.    'I  do  not  comprehend.' 

"The  turtle,  my  adored,  the  turtle!'  cried  the 
Doctor;  and  he  pushed  her  towards  the  kitchen, 
lantern  and  all. 

"Jean-Marie  stood  dumfounded.  He  had  pic- 
tured to  himself  a  different  scene — a  more  immedi- 
ate protest,  and  his  hope  began  to  dwindle  on  the 
spot. 

"The  Doctor  was  everywhere,  a  little  doubtful  on 
his  legs,  perhaps,  and  now  and  then  taking  the  wall 
with  his  shoulder;  for  it  was  long  since  he  had 
tasted  absinthe,  and  he  was  even  then  reflecting  that 
the  absinthe  had  been  a  misconception.  Not  that  he 
regretted  excess  on  such  a  glorious  day,  but  he  made 
a  mental  memorandum  to  beware;  he  must  not,  a 
second  time,  become  the  victim  of  a  deleterious 
habit.  He  had  his  wine  out  of  the  cellar  in  a 
twinkling;  he  arranged  the  sacrificial  vessels,  some 
on  the  white  table-cloth,  some  on  the  sideboard,  still 
crusted  with  historic  earth.  He  was  in  and  out  of 
the  kitchen,  plying  Anastasie  with  vermouth,  heating 
her  with  glimpses  of  the  future,  estimating  their 
new  wealth  at  ever  larger  figures;  and  before  they 
sat  down  to  supper,  the  lady's  virtue  had  melted  in 


THE   MORAL    FABLES  325 

the  fire  of  his  enthusiasm,  her  timidity  had  disap- 
peared; she,  too,  had  begun  to  speak  disparagingly 
of  the  life  at  Grez;  and  as  she  took  her  place  and 
helped  the  soup,  her  eyes  shone  with  the  glitter  of 
prospective  diamonds. 

"All  through  the  meal,  she  and  the  Doctor  made 
and  unmade  fairy  plans.  They  bobbed  and  bowed 
and  pledged  each  other.  Their  faces  ran  over  with 
smiles;  their  eyes  scattered  sparkles,  as  they  pro- 
jected the  Doctor's  political  honours  and  the  lady's 
drawing-room  ovations. 

"  'But  you  will  not  be  a  Red !'  cried  Anastasie. 

"  T  am  Left  Centre  to  the  core,'  replied  the 
Doctor. 

"  'Madame  Gastein  will  present  us — we  shall  find 
ourselves  forgotten,'  said  the  lady. 

"  'Never/  protested  the  Doctor.  'Beauty  and 
talent  leave  a  mark.' 

"  T  have  positively  forgotten  how  to  dress,'  she 
sighed. 

"  'Darling,  you  make  me  blush,'  cried  he.  "Yours 
has  been  a  tragic  marriage !' 

"  'But  your  success — to  see  you  appreciated,  hon- 
oured, your  name  in  all  the  papers,  that  will  be  more 
than  pleasure — it  will  be  heaven !'  she  cried. 

"  'And  once  a  week,'  said  the  Doctor,  archly  scan- 
ning the  syllables,  'once  a  week — one  good  little 
game  of  baccarat?' 

"  'Only  once  a  week  ?'  she  questioned,  threatening 
him  with  a  finger. 

"  T  swear  it  by  my  political  honour,'  cried  he. 


326  STEVENSON 

"  'I  spoil  you/  she  said,  and  gave  him  her  hand. 

"He  covered  it  with  kisses. 

"Jean-Marie  escaped  into  the  night.  The  moon 
swung  high  over  Grez.  He  went  down  to  the  gar- 
den end  and  sat  on  the  jetty.  The  river  ran  by  with 
eddies  of  oily  silver,  and  a  low,  monotonous  song. 
Faint  veils  of  mist  moved  among  the  poplars  on  the 
farther  side.  The  reeds  were  quietly  nodding.  A 
hundred  times  already  had  the  boy  sat,  on  such  a 
night,  and  watched  the  streaming  river  with  un- 
troubled fancy.  And  this  perhaps  was  to  be  the 
last.  He  was  to  leave  this  familiar  hamlet,  this 
green,  rustling  country,  this  bright  and  quiet  stream ; 
he  was  to  pass  into  the  great  city;  his  dear  lady 
mistress  was  to  move  bedizened  into  saloons;  his 
good,  garrulous,  kind-hearted  master  to  become  a 
brawling  deputy ;  and  both  be  lost  for  ever  to  Jean- 
Marie  and  their  better  selves.  He  knew  his  own 
defects;  he  knew  he  must  sink  into  less  and  less 
consideration  in  the  turmoil  of  a  city  life;  sink  more 
and  more  from  the  child  into  the  servant.  And  he 
began  dimly  to  believe  the  Doctor's  prophecies  of 
evil.  He  could  see  a  change  in  both.  His  generous 
incredulity  failed  him  for  this  once;  a  child  must 
have  perceived  that  the  Hermitage  had  completed 
what  the  absinthe  had  begun.  If  this  were  the  first 
day,  what  would  be  the  last?  'If  necessary,  wreck 
the  train,'  thought  he,  remembering  the  Doctor's 
parable.  He  looked  round  on  the  delightful  scene; 
he  drank  deep  of  the  charmed  night  air,  laden  with 
the  scent  of  hay.     'If  necessary,  wreck  the  train,' 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  327 

he  repeated.  And  he  rose  and  returned  to  the 
house. 

"The  next  morning  there  was  a  most  unusual  out- 
cry in  the  Doctor's  house.  The  last  thing  before 
going  to  bed,  the  Doctor  had  locked  up  some  valu- 
ables in  the  dining-room  cupboard;  and  behold, 
when  he  rose  again,  as  he  did  about  four  o'clock, 
the  cupboard  had  been  broken  open,  and  the  valu- 
ables in  question  had  disappeared.  Madame  and 
Jean-Marie  were  summoned  from  their  rooms,  and 
appeared  in  hasty  toilets;  they  found  the  Doctor 
raving,  calling  the  heavens  to  witness  and  avenge  his 
injury,  pacing  the  room  bare-footed,  with  the  tails 
of  his  night-shirt  flirting  as  he  turned. 

"  'Gone !'  he  said ;  'the  things  are  gone,  the  for- 
tune gone !  We  are  paupers  once  more.  Boy !  what 
do  you  know  of  this?  Speak  up,  sir,  speak  up.  Do 
you  know  of  it?  Where  are  they?'  He  had  him  by 
the  arm,  shaking  him  like  a  bag,  and  the  boy's  words, 
if  he  had  any,  were  jolted  forth  in  inarticulate  mur- 
murs. The  Doctor,  with  a  revulsion  from  his  own 
violence,  set  him  down  again.  He  observed  Anas- 
tasie  in  tears.  'Anastasie,'  he  said,  in  quite  an 
altered  voice,  'compose  yourself,  command  your  feel- 
ings. I  would  not  have  you  give  way  to  passion  like 
the  vulgar.  This — this  trifling  accident  must  be 
lived  down.  Jean-Marie,  bring  me  my  smaller  med- 
icine chest.    A  gentle  laxative  is  indicated.' 

"And  he  dosed  the  family  all  around,  leading  the 
way  himself  with  a  double  quantity.  The  wretched 
Anastasie,  who  had  never  been  ill  in  the  whole  course 


328  STEVENSON 

of  her  existence,  and  whose  soul  recoiled  from  reme- 
dies, wept  floods  of  tears  as  she  sipped,  and  shud- 
dered and  protested,  and  then  was  bullied  and 
shouted  at  until  she  sipped  again.  As  for  Jean- 
Marie,  he  took  his  portion  down  with  stoicism. 

"  'I  have  given  him  a  less  amount,'  observed  the 
Doctor,  'his  youth  protecting  him  against  emotion. 
And  now  that  we  have  thus  parried  any  morbid  con- 
sequences, let  us  reason.' 

"  'I  am  so  cold,'  wailed  Anastasie. 

"  'Cold !'  cried  the  Doctor.  'I  give  thanks  to  God 
that  I  am  made  of  fierier  material.  Why,  madame, 
a  blow  like  this  would  set  a  frog  into  a  transpiration. 
If  you  are  cold,  you  can  retire;  and,  by  the  way, 
you  might  throw  me  down  my  trousers.  It  is 
chilly  for  the  legs.'  " 

This  is  near  the  top  of  Stevensonian  humor.  But 
do  not  imagine  that  the  Doctor  loses  his  philosophy. 
He  only  changes  it. — Always  thus  with  optimists. 
He  of  course  fails  utterly  to  discover  the  criminal. 
For  how  could  philosophy  which  had  been  the 
teacher  of  common  sense  hope  to  detect  it !  His  in- 
ductive process  of  reasoning  is  perfect.  Anastasie 
is  more  than  ever  convinced  that  her  husband  is  a 
genius.  All  the  evidence  leads  straight  to  Jean- 
Marie  ;  but  obviously,  as  Desprez's  pupil,  he  is  above 
suspicion.  It  is  only  when  Casimir,  the  city  man 
without  sentiments,  arrives,  that  Desprez  is  con- 
vinced. Being  convinced,  however,  makes  no  dif- 
ference.   Desprez  refuses  to  believe.    "  'If  that  boy 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  329 

came  and  told  me  so  himself,  I  should  not  believe 
him;  and  if  I  did  believe  him,  so  implicit  is  my  trust, 
I  should  conclude  that  he  had  acted  for  the  best.' 
'Well,  well/  said  Casimir,  indulgently.  'Have  you 
alight?    I  must  be  going/  " 

The  rationalization  of  the  Doctor  now  follows. 
A  tornado  blows  down  his  house,  his  investments  in 
"Turks,"  which  Casimir  has  vainly  tried  to  make 
him  sell,  go  to  smash.  He  is  ruined.  And  mean- 
while Jean-Marie  watches  dolefuly  for  the  proper 
moment.  At  last  it  arrives.  Of  course,  they  all 
think  that  Jean-Marie  has  deserted  them  when  he 
saw  that  nothing  more  was  to  be  gained.  Romantic 
Optimism,  Female  Propriety,  Practical  Unim- 
portance— Desprez,  Anastasie,  Casimir,  that  is — all 
think  that  perverse  Natural  Sense  has  turned  hypo- 
crite. He  has,  however,  only  gone  to  fetch,  at  the 
right  moment,  their  sine  qua  non. 

"  'Hullo/  cried  Casimir,  'there  goes  the  stable- 
boy  with  his  luggage;  no,  egad,  he  is  taking  it  into 
the  inn/ 

"And  sure  enough,  Jean-Marie  was  seen  to  cross 
the  snowy  street  and  enter  Tentaillon's,  staggering 
under  a  large  hamper. 

"The  Doctor  stopped  with  a  sudden,  wild  hope. 

"  'What  can  he  have  ?'  he  said.  'Let  us  go  and 
see/    And  he  hurried  on. 

"  'His  luggage,  to  be  sure/  answered  Casimir. 
'He  is  on  the  move — thanks  to  the  commercial 
imagination/ 


330  STEVENSON 

"  'I  have  not  seen  that  hamper  for — for  ever  so 
long,'  remarked  the  Doctor. 

"  'Nor  will  you  see  it  much  longer,'  chuckled  Casi- 
mir;  "unless,  indeed,  we  interfere.  And  by  the 
way,  I  insist  on  an  examination.' 

"  'You  will  not  require,'  said  Desprez,  positively 
with  a  sob ;  and,  casting  a  moist,  triumphant  glance 
at  Casimir,  he  began  to  run. 

"  'What  the  devil  is  up  with  him,  I  wonder  ?' 
Casimir  reflected;  and  then,  curiosity  taking  the 
upper  hand,  he  followed  the  Doctor's  example  and 
took  to  his  heels. 

"The  hamper  was  so  heavy  and  large,  and  Jean- 
Marie  himself  so  little  and  so  weary,  that  it  had 
taken  him  a  great  while  to  bundle  it  upstairs  to  the 
Desprez'  private  room;  and  he  had  just  set  it  down 
on  the  floor  in  front  of  Anastasie,  when  the  Doctor 
arrived,  and  was  closely  followed  by  the  man  of 
business.  Boy  and  hamper  were  both  in  a  most 
sorry  plight;  for  the  one  had  passed  four  months 
underground  in  a  certain  cave  on  the  way  to 
Acheres,  and  the  other  had  run  about  five  miles,  as 
hard  as  his  legs  would  carry  him,  half  that  distance 
under  a  staggering  weight. 

"  'Jean-Marie,'  cried  the  Doctor,  in  a  voice  that 
was  only  too  seraphic  to  be  called  hysterical,  'is 
it — ?  It  is!'  he  cried.  'O,  my  son,  my  son!'  And 
he  sat  down  upon  the  hamper  and  sobbed  like  a 
little  child. 

"  'You  will  not  go  to  Paris,  now,'  said  Jean-Marie 
sheepishly. 


THE    MORAL   FABLES  331 

"  'Casimir,'  said  Desprez,  raising  his  wet  face,  'do 
you  see  that  boy,  that  angel  boy?  He  is  the  thief; 
he  took  the  treasure  from  a  man  unfit  to  be  en- 
trusted with  its  use;  he  brings  it  back  to  me  when 
I  am  sobered  and  humbled.  These,  Casimir,  are  the 
Fruits  of  my  Teaching,  and  this  moment  is  the  Re- 
ward of  my  Life.' 

"  'Tiens/  said  Casimir." — "The  Treasure  of 
Franchard,"  The  Merry  Men,  etc. 

It  may  be  said  that  in  all  Stevenson  there  is  but 
one  doctrine:  Expand  the  fine  and  enjoyable  part 
of  your  own  nature.  Of  this  Stevenson's  philosophy 
is  but  a  constant  development  and  restatement.  His 
stories  are  again  and  again  its  illustration.  He 
treats  the  matter  in  many  ways:  lightly  and  per- 
sonally as  in  "Ordered  South"  and  "An  Apology 
for  Idlers";  with  calm  seriousness  as  in  "Aes 
Triplex" ;  whimsically  as  in  "Franchard" ;  with  ter- 
rible force  in  the  parables  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  "Mark- 
heim."  But  it  is  ever  a  vision  that  touches  the 
same  truth. 

And  this  is  Stevenson's  chief  claim  to  distinction 
— that  he  has  made  one  of  the  great  moral  doctrines 
of  life  vivid,  viewed  it  from  every  side,  understood 
all  its  significances,  its  multiplicity  of  contacts.  The 
ordinary  man  repeats :  "Oh,  yes,  cheerfulness  and 
courage  are  fine  qualities.  Be  cheerful,  be  brave. 
Be  on  the  positive  side  of  life.  You  will  be  happier 
and  more  successful.  Stick  to  your  better  self,  your 
true  nature,"  etc.  These  are  the  tedious  generalities 


332  STEVENSON 

of  the  ordinary  man.  Stevenson  lets  the  doctrine 
permeate  life.  With  him  it  becomes  the  guiding 
principle.  In  religion,  in  morals,  in  art,  in  friend- 
ship, in  intellectual  growth,  in  the  progress  of  a 
realistic  and  material  civilization,  it  has  the  same 
mission.  It  is  this  which  gives  force  and  unity  to 
Stevenson's  work  and  which  led  the  public  to  expect 
a  certain  rather  definite  thing  from  him,  in  spite 
of  the  varying  shapes  with  which  his  imagination 
was  endowing  it. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  MIRROR  OF  THE  SOUTH  SEAS 
I 

BY  the  time  of  Stevenson's  second  brief  so- 
journ in  America  and  departure  to  the  South 
Seas,  the  public  had  come  to  regard  him  as  their 
most  entertaining  and  perhaps  their  most  significant 
moralist.  He  humanized  afresh  and  brought  into 
the  sun  much  of  the  wisdom  of  the  storehouses — 
much  that  young  men  of  his  day  were  looking  for, 
and  might  have  found  in  Epictetus,  Montaigne, 
Hazlitt,  or  Emerson.  Stevenson's  originality  can 
be  truly  perceived  only  by  one  who  comes  directly 
from  Stevenson's  favorite  reading  in  these  authors. 
His  originality  consisted  very  largely  in  learning 
their  careful  wisdom  with  more  daring  enthusiasm ; 
and  it  is  difficult  for  us  of  a  later  generation,  which 
has  had  its  fill  of  "morals"  if  ever  a  generation  has 
had,  to  realize  how  fresh,  even  how  revolutionary, 
Stevenson's  doctrine  sounded  to  the  youth  of  Eng- 
land and  New  England  who  were  being  brought  up 
literally  on  the  catechism,  and  who,  like  their  fathers, 
had  been  taught  to  sniff  the  smoke  of  the  under- 

333 


334  STEVENSON 

world  in  every  wind  of  destiny.  It  may  be  a  true 
creed,  that  old  one — it  may  be  that,  even  in  child- 
hood or  before  birth,  we  are  all  hell-scorched  and 
devil-bitten;  but  that  is  not  the  valuable  thing  to 
think  on  in  youth.  Stevenson's  mission  was  to 
bring  once  more  a  positive  message  to  his  fellow 
victims.  No  philosopher  whom  they  were  capable 
of  understanding  had  spoken  out  so  sanely  and  so 
enthusiastically  about  the  immediate  concerns  of 
youthful  thought — about  courage,  and  anarchy,  and 
love,  and  success.  His  reasonings  were  not  ab- 
stract; his  examples  were  intimate.  For  many  a 
young  man,  they  seemed  to  put  the  stamp  of  high 
seriousness  on  those  latent  notions  which  he  had 
long  sneakingly  suspected  of  being  the  better  part 
of  his  nature.  Now  he  had  the  courage  of  his 
suspicions  and  could  look  the  world  in  the  face. 

Thus,  though  Stevenson  was  the  author  of  many 
other  things  which  an  admiring  public  was  ready  to 
accept,  he  undoubtedly  had  his  serious  regard  as 
a  man  devoted  to  the  discovery  of  a  fresh  and  more 
positive  outlook  on  life.  His  sermons  were  some- 
times very  definitely  sermons;  oftener  they  were 
essays  and  fables.  In  any  case  he  came  to  be  cher- 
ished as  a  most  stimulating,  a  most  graceful,  and 
certainly  as  the  least  tedious,  preacher  whom 
preacher-loving  Americans  and  English  had  found 
for  a  generation.  The  fact  that  the  preacher  was 
himself  a  man  with  one  foot  in  the  grave  who  yet 
told  splendid  stories  of  youth  and  courage,  gave 
his  morality  only  the  greater  weight.     He  spoke 


THE  MIRROR  OF  THE  SOUTH  SEAS     335 

out  of  experience  and  out  of  imagination,  but  never 
out  of  dogma  or  mere  theory. 

At  the  flood-tide  of  popular  interest,  and  enor- 
mously enhancing  the  character  of  it,  the  adventurer 
in  fictions  and  moralities  embarked  on  the  sea  of 
true  romance.  Nothing  has  ever  interested  the  con- 
temporary world  in  a  literary  career  so  much  as  the 
voyages  of  Stevenson  in  1888  across  the  face  of 
the  Pacific  in  search  of  health,  and  his  settling  at 
last  in  1890  on  the  island  of  Upolu  in  Samba.  It 
was  wonderfully  stirring  to  the  imagination.  It 
opened  a  vista.  It  taught  Europe  a  new  geography. 
That  the  author  of  Treasure  Island  was  himself 
chartering  a  topsail  schooner  and  going  on  a  hunt 
for  something  more  precious  than  gold,  something 
which  would  perhaps  prove  to  be  over  the  edge  of 
the  map,  fascinated  all  of  us  in  that  day.  No  doubt 
we  expected  a  new  marvelous  romance  of  the  sea 
as  the  natural  result.  And  a  few  of  us  professed 
to  find  it  in  The  Wrecker,  a  tale  conceived  and  writ- 
ten in  a  ship's  cabin. 

But  the  significant  thing  about  Stevenson's  South 
Sea  writings,  taken  as  a  whole,  is  not  the  spirit  of 
far  adventure  in  them.  Though  they  are  most 
fanciful,  they  are  also  the  most  realistically  inspired 
of  all  his  work;  and  their  great  significance  is  the 
criticism  they  make  of  what  seems  to  most  people 
the  realest  thing  in  history — the  "success,"  or,  as 
one  must  say  in  the  light  of  the  Great  War,  the 
power,  of  our  commercial  civilization. 

It  is  difficult  to  explain  just  what  this  criticism 


336  STEVENSON 

consists  in,  for  it  is  a  criticism  of  civilization  that 
rests  on  a  philosophy  as  yet  not  well  formulated — a 
philosophy  that  exists  sanely  only  in  its  illustrations 
in  works  of  fiction  and  travel.  Its  clearest  popular 
exponent  is  for  the  moment  Jack  London,  in  his 
terrible  story,  The  Call  of  the  Wild,  and  in  certain 
shorter  tales;  and  by  far  its  subtlest  expression  lies 
in  the  romances  of  Joseph  Conrad.  But  Stevenson's 
Ebb  Tide,  "The  Beach  of  Falesa,"  and  certain  pages 
of  The  Wrecker  are  evidences  of  the  same  kind  of 
thought. 

Primitivism,  it  is  true,  has  often  been  a  motive 
in  art  and  in  philosophy.  It  was  such  a  hundred 
years  ago  with  the  socialistic  poets  and  philosophers 
who  for  the  most  part  romanticized  it.  They  claimed 
that  a  return  to  the  "natural"  state  would  enable 
men  to  perceive  what  is  unessential  in  their  present 
accumulation  of  conventions,  and  to  grow  up  again 
clearer  minded  and  less  encumbered,  and  hence  in 
closer  personal  sympathy  with  one  another.  But  the 
present  group  of  socialistic  writers,  with  whom 
Stevenson  has  certain  affinities,  show  us  the  matter 
less  theoretically.  They  tell  the  story  of  human 
nature  as  it  would  be  without  the  all-valuable  veneer. 
In  the  light  of  various  types  of  primitivism,  some- 
where out  on  the  borders  of  society,  the  character 
of  modern  civilization  is  symbolically  reflected  and 
becomes  less  inscrutable.  The  South  Seas  are  a 
mirror  for  Europe,  where  a  carefully  bred  English- 
man, let  us  say,  may  see  himself  stripped  of  his  mor- 
als, his  tastes,  his  clothes,  and  most  of  his  other 


THE  MIRROR  OF  THE  SOUTH  SEAS    337 

clever  adjustments  to  implacable  nature.  What  is 
he  like  in  this  mirror  ? 

The  sight  at  first  disgusts,  then  fascinates,  and 
at  last  inspires.  Man  is  still  so  much  an  animal ;  yes, 
but  a  God-made  animal.  He  is  real.  He  can  not  be 
denaturalized.  He  is  part  of  evolution.  "I  love  the 
Polynesian,"  Stevenson  writes  to  Low :  "This  civil- 
ization of  ours  is  a  dingy,  ungentlemanly  business; 
it  drops  out  too  much  of  man,  and  too  much  of 
that  the  very  beauty  of  the  poor  beast;  who  has  his 
beauties  in  spite  of  Zola  and  Co." 

Out  on  the  borderlands  we  can  see  what  the  ele- 
mental laws  really  are  and  what  they  signify.  In 
society,  for  instance,  we  talk  about  private  ambi- 
tions; in  the  borderland  that  is  just  a  law — it  can 
not  be  escaped — and  it  is  called  the  law  of  club  and 
fang.  How  horribly  plain  that  becomes  in  Jack 
London's  Call  of  the  Wild.  How  the  veneer  cracks 
off,  and  how  infinitely  valuable  it  at  once  appears 
to  be.  Obviously,  it  is  the  veneer  that  we  must 
improve,  not  the  law  that  we  must  try  to  change. 
For  the  law  is  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  the  law 
that  includes  all  others,  the  law  that  itself  is  civiliza- 
tion. It  is  on  this  law  that  the  socialistic  argument 
depends;  for  this  is  also  the  law  of  the  unity  of  all 
nature.  It  is  the  law  which  says  that  we  are  all 
directed  by  the  same  fundamental  passions.  In 
society  we  have  a  saying  that  one  should  control 
these  passions,  and  we  accordingly  describe  them 
to  suit  ideals  of  self-control,  love,  honor,  loyalty, 
in  our  parlance.    In  the  far  mirror  of  the  sea  it  is 


338  STEVENSON 

plain  that  they  are  meant  to  be  embodied  rather 
than  controlled,  if  one  would  survive;  and  hence 
they  appear  more  crudely  as  sexual  desire,  physical 
courage,  family  instinct. 

And  now  it  becomes  apparent  why  barbarism  is 
so  interesting  to  us,  why  "The  Beach  of  Falesa" 
and  parts  of  In  the  South  Seas  are  absorbing  read- 
ing. It  is  not  just  because  of  the  strangeness  of 
it  all.  It  is  really  because  of  its  awful  familiarity. 
It  lurks  under  our  skins.  It  beats  in  the  pulse  of 
our  cities.  For  barbarism,  with  its  squalor,  its 
brutality,  its  crude  struggle  for  the  upper  hand,  or 
else  with  its  cheerful  passivity,  its  sensuous  abandon, 
its  indifference  to  fate,  makes  perfectly  plain  what 
is  still  going  on  among  ourselves  in  a  more  com- 
plicated, a  more  inscrutable,  but  no  less  inevitable 
fashion. 

Let  us  look  at  an  illustration. 

The  beach  of  Falesa  is  one  of  the  outposts  of 
civilization  in  the  midst  of  the  sea — that  is,  a  trading 
station.  For  it  is  barter  that  makes  civilized  laws 
necessary  and  that  ultimately  brings  in  the  soundest 
notions  of  responsibility,  trust,  and  justice.  But  when 
Wiltshire  comes  to  his  new  station  at  Falesa,  laws 
are  very  distant,  usually  a  couple  of  thousand  of 
miles  or  so,  though  shadowed  forth  now  and  then 
by  the  steamer  or  the  missionary.  Othef  ideas, 
however,  take  their  places :  the  native  superstitions ; 
sheer  competition — all's  fair  in  trade  and  war,  which 
is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  trade  is  war; 
and  finally  the  universal  instinct  of  family  and  sex. 


THE  MIRROR  OF  THE  SOUTH  SEAS    339 

These  things,  if  thoroughly  understood  are  pretty 
definite  matters.  But  Wiltshire  is  ignorant  of  the 
exact  nature  of  Falesa  superstition;  he  is  fooled  by 
Mr.  Case  into  believing  that  the  rule  of  competi- 
tion has  been  temporarily  suspended  in  favor  of 
cooperation;  and  he  is  for  some  time  rather  skep- 
tical about  the  moral  value  of  the  universal  instinct, 
so  far  as  it  concerns  the  Kanaka  girl  whom  he  takes 
to  wife.  It  is  a  fair  confusion,  typical  of  the  con- 
flict of  notions  from  which  civilized  custom  has 
arisen. 

Thus  the  most  interesting  thing  in  the  story  is 
Wiltshire's  psychology.  He  has  been  leading  a  soli- 
tary life  on  an  island  where  there  are  no  other  white 
men.  At  Falesa  there  are  three — two  whites  and 
a  negro.  They  will  be  his  rivals  in  the  copra  trade ; 
but  rivalry,  with  company,  is  welcome.  However, 
it  is  not  exactly  rivalry,  he  is  to  meet.  It  is  rivalry 
removed  from  all  thought  of  responsibility,  trust, 
or  justice.  Mr.  Case,  the  fakir  and  sensualist,  typi- 
fies the  horrible  nature  of  competition  under  such 
conditions.  Wiltshire  and  Uma,  on  the  other 
hand,  have  the  decent  streak  in  their  natures  that 
has  always  wrought  civilization  instead  of  animal- 
ism out  of  human  relationships.  Its  development, 
under  these  circumstances,  is  the  essence  of  the 
story.  Yet  were  the  plot  adapted  to  a  civilized  set- 
ting this  development  would  not  be  any  too  obvious. 
It  requires  the  beach  of  Falesa  and  its  morals  to 
illustrate  the  point. 

Wiltshire  is  welcomed  to  the  beach  by  Case,  who 


340  STEVENSON 

immediately  reminds  him  that  the  first  thing  on  the 
program  is  to  pick  out  a  wife.  They  review  the 
crowd  of  island  girls  who  are  all  dressed  out  because 
of  the  arrival  of  the  ship;  but  Wiltshire  takes  a 
fancy  to  Uma,  a  girl  slenderer  and  more  timid  than 
the  others,  whom  he  sees  coming  up  from  fishing 
attired  only  in  a  chemise.  Case  does  the  wooing 
in  the  Falesa  dialect  which  Wiltshire  does  not  un- 
derstand. Then  they  are  married  by  the  negro, 
and  Case  writes  out  Uma's  certificate  to  the  effect 
that  she  is  "illegally"  married  to  Mr.  John  Wilt- 
shire and  that  he  may  send  her  packing  when  he 
pleases.  "A  nice  paper  to  put  in  a  girl's  hand  and 
see  her  hide  away  like  gold,"  says  Wiltshire,  who 
adds  that  this  practise  is  all  due  to  the  missionaries, 
for  if  it  weren't  for  the  notions  they  put  into  girls* 
heads  no  such  deception  would  be  necessary. 

This  bit  of  morality  is  the  first  stirring  of  Wilt- 
shire's conscience.  It  develops  with  amazing  ra- 
pidity through  the  devotion  that  Uma  shortly  in- 
spires, and  through  the  peculiar  situation  in  which 
he  finds  that  she  has  placed  him.  The  marriage  has 
been  a  trick  of  Case's — Uma  belongs  to  another 
island  and  she  is  taboo  in  Falesa.  So  long  as  she 
stays  with  him,  Wiltshire  can  not  sell  a  yard  of 
calico  or  buy  a  pound  of  copra.  But  he  does  not 
throw  her  over.  Case  had  told  her  that  he  was 
wild  about  her  and  cared  nothing  for  the  taboo; 
and  now  Wiltshire  proceeds  to  get  even  with  Case. 
That  makes  the  finale  of  the  story,  but  not  the  best 
part  of  it.     The  best  part  is  at  the  beginning — as 


THE  MIRROR  OF  THE  SOUTH  SEAS     341 

nearly  always  in  Stevenson — about  the  develop- 
ment of  Wiltshire's  romantic  moral  sense,  and  about 
his  true  marriage  performed  by  the  visiting  mission- 
ary. Here  there  is  a  curious  thing  that  must  not 
pass  unnoticed.  Wiltshire  is  in  a  situation  that 
would  develop  a  conscience,  if  ever  a  man  was; 
but  between  the  devotion  of  TJma,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  utter  treachery  of  Case,  on  the  other,  he 
acts  according  to  absolute  instinct.  Convention  can 
hardly  be  said  to  guide  hirn  at  all.  It  will  occur  to 
the  reader  only  afterward  that  his  conduct  is  just 
what  European  convention  would  also  demand  of 
him. 

This  first  part  of  the  story,  told  in  Wiltshire's 
peculiarly  picturesque  vocabulary  and  strain  of  orig- 
inal wisdom,  is  undoubtedly  at  Stevenson's  highest 
pitch.  The  whole  temperament  of  the  trader,  as 
a  restless  vagabond  who  has  yet  been  forced  to  do 
a  good  deal  of  quiet  thinking  during  long  island 
exiles,  a  man  whose  morals  are  not  all  they  should 
be  but  whose  deductions  from  experience  are  un- 
questionable, is  a  careful  and  serious  creation.  His 
sentiment  and  imagination  belong  to  him  alone. 
For  ninety  pages  he  is  a  masterpiece.  Then  the 
plot  swallows  him,  or,  rather,  cuts  him  off,  and  he 
vanishes,  like  too  many  of  Stevenson's  characters, 
into  the  mechanics  of  melodrama. 

I  do  not  mean  that  there  is  anything  unlikely  in 
the  "devil  work"  at  the  end  of  "The  Beach  of 
Falesa."  It  is  true  enough  to  island  superstition. 
But  compared  to  the  similar  coloring  in  "The  Isle 


342  STEVENSON 

of  Voices,"  for  instance,  it  fails  lamentably.  The 
emphasis  is  all  on  a  lurid  realism,  which  is  against 
Stevenson's  own  rule. 


II 


There  must  perhaps  be  the  same  final  judgment  of 
The  Ebb-Tide,  which  has  an  entrancingly  true  and 
romantic  start  on  the  beach  of  Papeete,  the  work  of 
Lloyd  Osbourne,  and  then  a  dime-novel  climax  on 
Attwater's  mysterious  island.  But  meanwhile  the 
story,  though  nowhere  done  with  the  genius  that 
marks  the  delineation  of  Wiltshire's  character,  is  a 
more  evenly  sustained  piece  of  work,  having  a  more 
definite  purpose.  The  Ebb-Tide  is  distinctly  one 
of  Stevenson's  moral  fables.  It  might  be  compared 
to  Dr.  Jekyll;  and  though  I  have  heard  it  argued 
that  it  is  just  a  wild  romantic  tale,  the  title,  and  the 
motto,  and  the  last  three  chapters,  are  written  for 
him  who  can  read  morality  and  not  for  the  plot- 
sleuth. 

It  is  a  fable  of  the  relation  of  Evil  to  Fate,  and  its 
significance  depends  very  largely  on  its  setting  in 
a  part  of  the  world  where  any  connection  between 
the  two  is  often  so  vague  as  to  appear  a  mere  acci- 
dent. The  writer's  problem  was  therefore  to  make 
the  evil  reside  in  a  course  of  characteristic  and 
logical  actions  by  the  dramatis  personce,  and  then  to 
give  the  atmosphere  of  fate  that  surrounds  them  a 
portentous,  arbitrary,  even  God-like,  quality,  such 
as  fate  has  where  the  influence  of  moral  obligations 


THE  MIRROR  OF  THE  SOUTH  SEAS     343 

is  no  more  sharply  felt  than  that  of  weather  two 
thousand  miles  off.  It  is  this  quality  of  fate  in 
barbaric  civilization  that  produces  its  myths.  So 
in  the  story  this  quality  for  a  time  hides  the  fact 
that  fate  has  all  along  resided  with  the  evil  in  the 
course  of  evil  action,  and  not  in  external  circum- 
stances. In  the  end,  the  more  intelligent  of  the 
characters  is  brought  to  understand  that  the  results 
are  logical,  that  the  net  which  encloses  him  and  his 
two  pals  has  not  dropped  from  the  sky,  but  is  en- 
tirely of  their  own  weaving.  Attwater  is  an  avenger 
only  because  they  make  him  such.  Hence  Attwater 
is  for  them  a  sort  of  mythical  deity,  or,  as  Her  rick 
puts  it,  he  "looks  at  us  and  laughs  like  God."  The 
whole  thing  symbolizes  the  character  of  crime  and 
of  that  inly- working  power  which  brings  a  criminal 
to  justice. 

The  story  is  about  three  men  who  are  "on  the 
beach"  at  Papeete.  Herrick  and  Davis,  a  university 
man  and  a  sea-captain,  have  seen  better  days.  Huish, 
the  cockney,  one  of  Stevenson's  masterly  creations, 
may  be  with  them  as  a  result  of  something  worse 
than  ill-fortune  and  mere  "bad  character."  Papeete 
would  like  to  be  rid  of  all  three,  and  a  golden 
opportunity  soon  offers.  A  pest-ridden  schooner 
anchors  off  the  harbor,  her  captain  and  mate  dead 
of  the  smallpox.  Davis,  with  his  pals  as  mate  and 
cook,  is  put  in  charge.  No  one  else  will  touch  the 
job.  Now  there  is  more  than  smallpox  the  matter 
with  the  Farallone,  bound  "out  of  'Frisco  for  Syd- 
ney,  in   California  champagne."     For  the  cham- 


344  STEVENSON 

pagne,  as  the  new  "officers"  soon  discover  in  their 
tippling,  is  mostly  bottled  water.  Hence  it  is  obvi- 
ous that  she  was  never  intended  to  arrive  in  Sydney 
or  any  other  regular  port.  She  was  intended  for 
a  tale  to  the  insurance  companies.  Of  course  the 
new  officers  are  not  above  seeing  a  nice  little  chance 
for  themselves  in  all  this,  a  rather  better  chance  than 
that  offered  by  their  original  plan  of  trying  to  sell 
the  champagne  in  Peru  instead  of  in  Sydney. 

But  while  their  broaching  the  cargo  saved  them 
from  making  that  mistake,  they  soon  discover  some- 
thing that  would  have  effectually  prevented  them 
from  carrying  out  a  fool's  errand,  and  that  also 
threatens  to  spoil  the  new  plan  of  getting  the  Faral- 
lone  back  on  her  course,  wrecking  her,  and  then 
blackmailing  the  owners.  Their  new  plan  of  black- 
mail is  spoiled  by  their  shiftlessness  in  the  first 
instance.  They  suddenly  discover  that  the  provi- 
sions on  the  Farallone  were  calculated  to  hold  out 
only  a  little  farther  than  Papeete,  and  here  they 
are  well  on  their  islandless  course  to  Peru  with  not 
enough  rations  left  to  get  anywhere  at  all.  There 
is  a  good  deal  of  cursing  fate,  though  as  yet  they 
don't  understand  what  fate  really  is.  Then  a  thing 
happens  which  seems  just  like  Providence.  Att- 
water's  uncharted  atoll  springs  up  out  of  the  sea, 
heralding  itself  by  the  reflections  of  its  lagoon  on 
the  sky. 

That  is  the  beginning  of  the  story  as  far  as  I 
need  remind  you;  and,  thanks  to  Huish's  insubor- 
dination and  sheer  cussedness,   it  makes  a  mar- 


THE  MIRROR  OF  THE  SOUTH  SEAS    345 

velously  good  yarn  for  one  hundred  and  thirty  pages. 
The  fable  element  now  grows  in  importance  and 
you  not  only  have  to  keep  your  eyes  about  you,  but 
to  cast  them  back  over  the  beginning,  if  you  hope  to 
understand  it  from  the  author's  point  of  view. 

Huish,  Davis,  and  Herrick  are  gradations  in  the 
courage  and  purpose  of  evil.  Huish  is  the  strongest 
of  the  three  because  he  is  beyond  pangs  of  con- 
science and  repentance.  He  never  wavers.  Davis 
and  Herrick  would  like  to  reform  if  they  had  a 
permanent  chance — Davis  because  he  is  tired  of 
evil  life  as  uncomfortable  and  unsocial,  and  Her- 
rick because  he  has  still  some  shreds  of  conscience. 
It  is  Herrick's  conscience  that  renders  him  weak, 
sensitive,  will-less.  Though  he  can  rise  above  some 
petty  dissipation  like  champagne,  he  is  dominated  by 
Davis  in  all  important  decisions.  And  just  so  Davis 
is  dominated  by  Huish;  for  Huish  expresses  the 
stronger  side  of  Davis's  character  as  a  force  for  evil. 

These  three  souls  play  out  their  little  game  against 
Fate.  At  every  turn  they  lose.  Herrick  alone,  the 
weaker,  more  imaginative,  more  intelligent  nature, 
perceives  vaguely  what  is  beating  them — that  it  is 
their  own  evil  and  not  the  unfortunate  externals  in 
the  situation.  So  when  Providence  Itself  seems  to 
arrive  on  the  scene  and  rescue  them  with  an  un- 
charted island  containing  the  gigantic  shape  of  Att- 
water,  Herrick  soon  recognizes  that  this  is  not  be- 
neficent Providence,  but  a  terrible  ultimate  revenge. 
Huish  and  Davis  go  about  to  conquer  it,  to  conquer 
Fate !  and  the  irony  of  the  case  drives  Herrick  wild. 


346  STEVENSON 

He  attempts  suicide,  but  Attwater  rescues  him,  and 
thus  his  weakness  in  evil  becomes  his  salvation.  So 
it  is,  in  the  end,  with  Davis.  Rendered  utterly  de- 
fenseless, after  Huish  takes  his  little  fling  at  Fate 
with  a  bottle  of  vitriol,  Davis  at  last  discovers,  in 
the  further  nothingness  of  his  resources  in  evil,  his 
positive  freedom.  And  that  is  the  doctrine  which 
Fate  really  holds  for  us  all. 

So  far  as  the  art  of  the  story  is  concerned,  this 
moral  is  probably  insisted  on  too  late.  There  is  the 
usual  lack,  in  Stevenson's  longer  things,  of  a  definite 
intellectual  plan  at  the  start.  Though  suggested  by 
the  story  of  the  magic  carpet  which  Herrick  tells 
on  the  beach  at  Papeete,  and  by  what  each  man 
wishes  for — Huish's  "B  and  S"  being  without  ques- 
tion the  best  moment  of  his  life — the  moral  idea  of 
the  whole  tale  dawns  on  the  reader  only  about  page 
one  hundred  and  thirty.  It  requires  an  equal  space 
to  develop  it,  and  the  story  henceforth,  rather  en- 
cumbered with  it,  is  by  no  means  as  good  reading 
as  at  first.  It  is  possible  that  this  is  the  way  to 
drive  home  a  moral — to  surprise  the  reader  with 
it  half-way  through  a  book.  But  I  believe  that  if  it 
were  better  prepared  for,  the  end  might  have  been, 
not  the  sooner,  but  the  more  rapidly,  approached. 
The  characters,  after  the  middle  of  the  story,  fail  to 
grow  more  real.  Instead  they  become  moral  mouth- 
pieces. One  can  imagine  how  Joseph  Conrad  would 
have  seized  on  the  vital  issues  at  this  point,  how  he 
would  have  developed  them  in  a  definite  atmosphere 
and  have  kept  the  people  of  the  drama  in  livelier  pos- 


THE  MIRROR  OF  THE  SOUTH  SEAS    347 

session  of  their  temperaments — though  nobody 
could  possibly  improve  on  Huish's  vocabulary.  Yet 
he  would  not  succeed  so  well  as  Stevenson  with  the 
fabulous  meaning,  one  of  the  most  difficult  ideas  to 
handle  in  philosophy,  and  convincing  perhaps  only 
in  the  novels  of  Thomas  Hardy. 


Ill 


Stevenson  has  written  two  short  and  very  perfect 
fables  of  the  lust  for  gold  as  he  saw  it  in  that  part 
of  the  world:  "The  Bottle  Imp"  and  "The  Isle  of 
Voices."  Conceived  in  the  finest  vein  of  his  imagina- 
tion and  touched  with  the  poetry  of  island  life,  they 
are  more  nearly  Polynesian  romances  than  any- 
thing else  of  their  author's.  "The  Bottle  Imp"  is 
taken  from  a  German  story  and  vastly  improved. 
No  setting  could  suit  the  idea  better  than  the  Pa- 
cific. It  was  written  for  the  natives  and  first  printed 
in  Samoan — a  tale  such  as  Tusitala,  teller  of  tales, 
might  be  expected  to  invent.  "The  Isle  of  Voices" 
is  about  South  Sea  magic,  which  is  quite  unlike  the 
magic  of  Jack  and  the  Bean  Stalk,  Hans  Andersen, 
or  the  Arabian  Nights.  One  feels,  in  spite  of  him- 
self, like  the  missionary  in  another  of  Stevenson's 
stories,  that  there  is  "something  in  it."  It  is  full 
of  a  barbaric  terror  and  superstition  that  is  yet 
pervaded  by  a  very  real  meaning  and  a  vivid  charm. 
The  scenery  is  never  a  mere  fairy-land  scenery.  The 
spell  is  that  of  reality.  Mrs.  Stevenson  has  said 
that  she  could  never  read  it  without  seeing  again 


348  STEVENSON 

the  lagoon  at  Fakarava  where  her  husband  had  heard 
stories  something  like  it  from  the  half-caste  gov- 
ernor as  they  sat  on  the  beach  in  the  evening.  The 
governor  believed  his  stories  and  the  Stevensons 
did  not  wholly  doubt  them. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  MIRROR  OF  THE  SOUTH   SEAS:  VAILIMA 
I 

FROM  all  these  tales  and  their  philosophy  it 
would  be  obvious  that  the  writer  was  a  man 
who  knew  the  islands,  the  natives,  and  the  traders, 
with  exceptional  intimacy.  Yet  the  extent  of  Ste- 
venson's travels  through  Polynesia  is  not  often  ap- 
preciated, and  before  discussing  his  life  in  these 
parts  and  the  volume  about  his  cruises,  In  the  South 
Seas,  I  wish  to  give  here  an  itinerary  which  I  be- 
lieve is  more  exact  than  the  reader  will  be  apt  to 
discover  elsewhere. 

The  seventy-ton  racing  schooner,  Casco,  ninety- 
five  feet  in  length,  with  Captain  Otis,  a  cook,  four 
deck-hands  (sea-lawyers  all  of  them),  Mrs.  Thomas 
Stevenson,  Mrs.  R.  L.  Stevenson,  Lloyd  Osbourne 
(then  twenty  years  old),  Valentine  Roch  (who 
the  captain  insisted  should  ship  as  cabin-boy)  and 
R.  L.  S.  sailed  from  San  Francisco  on  June  twenty- 
eighth,  1888,  and  sighted  Nukuhiva  in  the  Marquesas 
(high  islands)  just  a  month  later.  This  was  a  voy- 
age of  some  twenty-eight  hundred  sea  miles  nearly 

349 


350  STEVENSON 

southwest.  In  this  general  region  they  remained  until 
Christmas  day,  when  they  left  Tautira  in  the  Island 
of  Tahiti  for  Honolulu.  They  were  at  Nukuhiva, 
entertained  by  Prince  Stanislao  and  the  old  cannibal 
queen,  Vaekehu,  until  August  twenty-second.  On 
August  twenty-third  they  reached  Taahauku  in 
Hiva-oa,  and  then  left  the  Marquesas  for  the 
neighboring  group  of  the  Paumotos  (low  islands) 
September  fourth,  arriving  at  Fakarava  Sep- 
tember ninth,  a  voyage  still  southwest  about  six 
hundred  miles.  There  they  remained  till  the 
last  week  in  September,  and  voyaged  two  days, 
in  a  more  westerly  direction,  three  hundred  miles, 
to  Papeete  in  the  island  of  Tahiti  (a  high  island). 
They  encircled  this  island  to  Taravao  on  the  south 
side,  where  Stevenson  left  the  Casco  and  went  six- 
teen miles  in  a  cart  to  Tautira  in  order  to  escape 
mosquitoes  and  get  into  more  sanitary  quarters  dur- 
ing a  sharp  illness.  While  the  Casco  was  being  re- 
paired at  Papeete,  they  lived  in  Tautira  with  Prin- 
cess Moe  and  the  sub-chief  of  the*  village,  Ori,  a 
very  fine  Polynesian,  of  surpassing  generosity  and 
courtesy.  Leaving  on  Christmas  day,  they  arrived 
in  Honolulu,  after  a  voyage  of  thirty  days  and 
some  twenty- four  hundred  miles,  almost  due  north, 
on  January  24,  1889.  The  Casco  was  sent  back  to 
San  Francisco,  and  also  Valentine  Roch  returned 
to  France. 

Stevenson  lived  four  miles  out  of  Honolulu  at 
Waikiki.  He  was  not  very  well  and  found  it  difficult 
to  work  on  The  Master,  which  he  finished  in  May. 


THE    SOUTH    SEAS— VAILIMA      351 

He  spent  a  week  at  the  leper  colony  on  the  island  of 
Molokai.  From  Honolulu  Mrs.  Thomas  Stevenson 
went  home  to  Scotland,  Stevenson  then  expecting 
to  follow  before  the  end  of  the  year. 

On  June  twenty- fourth,  Stevenson,  his  wife, 
Lloyd,  and  their  cook,  Ah  Fu,  whom  they  had 
picked  up  in  the  Marquesas  in  place  of  the  original 
pseudo-Jap,  took  passage  with  Captain  Reid  on  the 
trading  schooner  Equator,  and  arrived  in  Butaritari 
in  the  Gilberts  (low  islands),  a  journey  of  two 
thousand  miles  southwest,  July  thirteenth.  It  was 
on  this  voyage  that  Stevenson  and  Lloyd,  in  order 
to  defray  their  expenses,  began  to  construct  the  mad 
plot  of  The  Wrecker  from  a  mysterious  yarn  that 
had  come  to  them  in  Honolulu.  After  some  six 
weeks  at  Butaritari  they  went  on  two  hundred  miles 
in  a  southeasterly  direction  to  Apemama  in  the  same 
group,  arriving  there  September  first.  King  Tem- 
binok  admitted  them  into  the  royal  enclosure  as  his 
guests,  giving  Stevenson  probably  his  most  intimate 
taste  of  island  life.  They  were  there  two  months, 
returning  to  Butaritari  in  the  Equator,  and  from 
thence  cruising  about  in  a  general  southeasterly  di- 
rection and  reaching  Apia  (Apia)  in  Upolu,  of  the 
Samoan  group  (high  islands),  a  direct  distance  of 
fourteen  hundred  miles,  on  December  7,  1889. 

As  yet  Stevenson  had  little  thought  of  settling  in 
Polynesia.  He  intended  to  collect  material  for  his 
book  concerning  the  islands  and  return  to  England 
via  Sydney.  But  during  January  he  bought  four 
hundred  acres  behind  Apia  on  Vaea  Mountain  and 


352  STEVENSON 

decided  to  build  a  house.  For  six  months  he  lived 
in  Apia  chiefly  with  the  American  trader,  H.  J. 
Moors,  who  became  his  great  friend  and  who  has 
written  a  book  of  Stevensonian  reminiscences.  Ste- 
venson was  then  busy  getting  information  for  his 
Foot-note  to  History,  an  account  of  the  interna- 
tional difficulties  in  the  Samoan  Islands. 

In  February,  1890,  the  Stevensons  went  to  Syd- 
ney, where  Mrs.  Strong  was  waiting  to  see  them 
on  their  way  to  England.  Here  he  immediately 
became  ill  with  colds  and  indigestion.  It  was  during 
this  visit  to  Sydney  that  he  wrote  his  open  letter 
about  Father  Damien  in  reply  to  accusations  against 
the  priest's  character  in  a  private  letter  by  the  Rev- 
erend Mr.  Hyde  of  Honolulu,  which  had  been 
printed  without  that  gentleman's  knowledge.  Da- 
mien  had  died  at  Molokai  of  leprosy  in  April,  while 
Stevenson  was  living  in  Honolulu.  Stevenson's 
letter  is  a  brave  but  illogical  letter;  and  in  doing 
justice  to  Damien,  Stevenson  undoubtedly  did  an 
injustice  to  Mr.  Hyde.  In  Sydney  Stevenson  in- 
formed Baxter,  his  official  agent  in  England,  that 
he  was  putting  off  his  return  home  till  September. 

He  spent  three  months,  from  April  to  August,  in 
the  trading  steamer  Janet  Nichol,  cruising  among 
the  islands  as  far  as  Penrhyn  Island  east  of  Samoa, 
and,  to  the  north,  as  far  as  the  Marshall  group. 
He  was  again  ill  at  Sydney  in  August  and  Septem- 
ber, 1890. 

This  seems  to  have  determined  him  to  give  up 
thought  of  an  immediate  return  to  Europe,  and 


THE    SOUTH    SEAS— VAILIMA      353 

Lloyd  Osbourne  was  dispatched  to  Skerry vore  for 
their  household  goods.  Stevenson  and  his  wife 
went  back  to  Apia  in  October,  and  they  lived  six 
months  in  a  rough  house  on  their  land.  In  January, 
1891,  he  again  went  to  Sydney  to  meet  his  mother, 
and,  after  a  third  sharp  illness  there,  he  returned 
with  her,  reaching  Apia  March  first;  but  the  house 
was  not  ready  and  she  went  to  visit  friends  in  Aus- 
tralia and  New  Zealand  for  two  months.  She  re- 
turned the  middle  of  May,  and  Mrs.  Strong  and 
her  boy,  Austin,  came  a  week  later.  By  this  time 
the  house  at  Vailima  plantation  had  been  built.  It 
was  considerably  enlarged  at  the  end  of  the  next 
year. 

Stevenson  paid  one  more  visit  to  Sydney  early  in 
1893,  and  in  September  went  up  to  Honolulu  for  a 
rest  from  the  harassing  political  troubles  at  Samoa. 
He  was  taken  sick,  however,  with  pneumonia,  and 
his  wife  came  on  to  take  care  of  him.  They  re- 
turned to  Apia1  in  November.  During  the  last 
year  of  Stevenson's  life  he  left  the  island  only  on 
short  boating  excursions.  He  died  suddenly  at 
Vailima  from  an  infusion  in  the  brain  on  December 
16,  1894.2 


1  Apia  is  centrally  located  in  Polynesia,  nearly  midway  be- 
tween the  New  Hebrides  and  Tahiti.  It  is  2,260  miles  to 
Honolulu,  2,355  to  Sydney,  4,161  to  San  Francisco.  Steven- 
son's house  at  Vailima  is  now  the  residence  of  the  German 
governor. 

2  It  seems  worth  remarking  here  the  energy  which  Mrs. 
Thomas  Stevenson  displayed  in  these  last  years  of  her  life. 
She  was  nearly  sixty  when  she  first  went  to  the  South  Seas 
with  her  son  in  the  Casco.  She  came  out  again  in  1891  and 
remained  two  years.    Then,  after  a  year's  absence  in  Scotland, 


354  STEVENSON 

II 

Stevenson's  activities  and  home  life  at  Samoa 
and  among  the  islands  have  been  treated  at  con- 
siderable length  in  so  many  books,  by  those  who 
knew  him  there,  that  I  shall  give  only  a  summary 
of  a  few  important  points. 

His  health  during  this  period  of  five  and  a  half 
years  had  improved  so  far  as  the  condition  of  his 
lungs  and  throat  was  concerned.  This  seems  to  be 
true  in  spite  of  the  constant  reference  in  his  letters 
and  his  mother's  to  colds  and  the  threatenings  of 
hemorrhage.  For  he  was  able  to  take  an  unprece- 
dented amount  of  physical  exercise,  working  in  the 
jungle  at  path-making,  exploring,  constantly  plan- 
ning the  development  of  his  estate,  riding  horseback 
to  and  from  Apia,  and  bearing  up  surprisingly  well 
on  long  excursions  to  native  villages.  This  is  one 
side  of  the  picture,  and  there  is  a  little  more  of  it 
visible  than  elsewhere  in  his  life.  At  rather  fre- 
quent intervals,  however,  he  was  down  with  in- 
fluenza, which  was  then  ravaging  Europe,  and  which 
has  a  specially  virulent  form  in  the  islands.  He 
had  bad  fits  of  indigestion  and  headache,  and  certain 
of  his  visitors  remark  on  his  habitual  appearance 
of  fatigue  or  complete  lassitude. 

His  achievement  at  this  period  is,  nevertheless, 
absolute  evidence  of  his  energy.  In  literature,  be- 
sides The  Wrecker,  The  Ebb-Tide,  and  the  three 


she  returned  in  June,  1894,  with  Graham  Balfour.  After  Ste- 
venson's death  she  was  at  Vailima  till  March,  1895,  and  then 
returning  to  Scotland,  died  there  two  years  later. 


THE    SOUTH    SEAS— VAILIMA      355 

shorter  tales  that  we  have  noticed,  there  are  also 
Weir  of  Hermiston  and  St.  Ives  (both  unfinished), 
The  Master,  and  David  Balfour.  A  number  of  his 
most  interesting  essays,  poems,  and  sketches  belong 
to  this  period,  notably  "A  Christmas  Sermon," 
"Rosa  Quo  Locorum,"  "A  Family  of  Engineers/' 
A  Foot-note  to  History,  "Father  Damien,"  the  Bal- 
lads. His  record  of  South  Sea  travel,  a  book  of 
four  hundred  pages,  and  his  letters  to  Colvin,  would 
alone  be  a  sign  of  considerable  vitality.  When 
Stevenson  lay  unconscious  on  his  death-bed,  one  of 
the  physicians  in  attendance  remarking  the  thinness 
of  his  arms  said,  "How  can  anybody  write  books 
with  arms  like  these?"  That  he  had  written  them 
all  with  arms  like  those  seemed  miraculous.  Ste- 
venson's vitality  seems  to  have  been  chiefly  a  matter 
of  spirit,  to  have  had  a  peculiarly  nervous  and  untir- 
ing quality.  The  details  of  daily  life,  on  the  cruises 
and  afterward  when  building  his  house  at  Vailima 
Plantation,  his  wife  and  Lloyd  Osbourne  were  never 
able  to  take  quite  off  his  shoulders.  He  seems  never 
to  have  long  neglected  the  minor  responsibilities  of 
the  life  he  shared.  Mrs.  Strong  was  his  devoted 
amanuensis,  but  the  mechanics  of  book-making  rest, 
after  all,  very  largely  on  the  author  himself.  Mr. 
Moors  was  of  the  greatest  service  during  the  months 
of  settling  and  building  at  Vailima;  yet  it  is  no 
small  accomplishment  to  have  a  house  built  for  you 
and  an  estate  developed,  and  to  follow  the  personal 
grievances  of  a  score  of  native  servants,  and  all 
the  time  to  satisfy  the  curiosity  of  visitors. 


356  STEVENSON 

The  Stevensons  were  beset  by  visitors,  both 
Europeans  and  natives;  and  since  for  the  natives, 
especially  the  Samoan  chiefs,  Stevenson  was  the 
most  important  white  man  in  the  islands,  he  took  in- 
finite pains  to  understand  their  affairs.  This  alone 
was  a  great  and  humane  service.  The  outward 
evidences  of  it  exist  in  his  Letters  to  "The  Times" 
and  the  Foot-note  to  History,  to  say  nothing  of  cer- 
tain official  documents  now  buried  in  the  office  of 
the  colonial  secretary. 

Stevenson  had  probably  seen  more  varieties  of 
Polynesian  life  than  any  other  European  traveler 
of  significance.  He  seems  to  have  had  a  peculiar 
faculty  for  adapting  himself  to  its  customs,  and 
hence  for  endearing  himself  to  the  people.  "To  love 
a  character  is  the  only  heroic  way  of  understanding 
it,"  he  once  wrote.  Trusting  always  in  the  "warm 
and  mutual  tolerations"  of  men,  he  had  long  been 
intimate  with  all  sorts  and  conditions:  the  painters 
at  Barbizon,  the  chemist  at  Hyeres  whom  he  in- 
spired to  write  stories,  the  captain  of  the  schooner 
Equator,  similarly  inspired  but  not  so  successful, 
the  company  of  the  steamer  Janet  Nichol,  to  whom 
he  dedicated  the  Island  Nights  Entertainments,  the 
knife-grinder  whom  he  describes  in  his  essay  on 
"Beggars"  and  with  whom  he  says  he  could  not 
have  got  on  so  well  had  he  himself  been  a  consistent 
first-class  passenger  through  life.  And  just  as  his 
sympathies  had  gone  out  in  abstract  fashion  to  the 
Chinese  in  the  emigrant  train,  so  they  now  went  out 
personally  in  his  close  contact  with  the  alien  peoples 


THE    SOUTH    SEAS— VAILIMA      357 

of  the  Pacific.  "Indeed,  we  all  speak  different 
dialects,"  he  remarks,  and  adds  elsewhere,  "but,  in- 
deed, I  think  we  all  belong  to  many  countries." 
This  stands,  moreover,  not  for  the  curiosity  of  a 
traveler,  but  for  what  Stevenson  regarded  as  a 
normal  human  duty.  Frequently  he  mentions  the 
duty  of  understanding  people,  the  duty  of  affection 
and  of  cultivating  those  habits  that  make  its  chan- 
nels easy.  The  Stevensons  were  criticized  by  puri- 
tans at  home  for  their  rather  easy-going  ways  in 
Polynesia.  But  the  emphasis  that  Stevenson  placed 
on  a  new  sort  of  morality,  a  more  positive  sort 
than  that  of  the  puritans,  was  perfectly  exemplified 
there  and  most  beautifully  rewarded. 

The  signal  instance  is  the  Road  of  the  Loving 
Heart  which  the  rebel  Mataafa  chiefs  completed 
for  him  on  their  release  from  a  political  imprison- 
ment that  Stevenson  had  done  all  in  his  power  to 
alleviate.  They  had  come  immediately  to  Vailima 
Plantation.  Mrs.  Strong,  in  her  charming  book, 
describes  the  incident  as  follows:  "Louis  enter- 
tained them  in  the  smoking-room ;  we  all  sat  on  the 
floor  in  a  semi-circle  and  had  ava  made.  Their 
speeches  were  very  beautiful,  and  full  of  genuine 
gratitude  as  they  went  back  over  the  history  of 
every  kindness  that  Louis  had  done  for  them.  In 
proof  of  their  gratitude  they  offered  to  make  a 
road,  sixty  feet  wide,  connecting  us  with  the  high- 
way across  the  island.  The  offer  touched  and  sur- 
prised Louis  very  much,  and  though  he  tried  to 
refuse,  they  overruled  every  objection.     He  said 


358  STEVENSON 

if  they  made  the  road  he  would  like  to  name  it  'The 
Road  of  the  Grateful  Hearts,'  but  they  said  no,  it 
would  be  called  'The  Road  oi  thf  Loving  Heart,' 
in  the  singular,  and  they  asked  me  to  copy  out  a 
paper  they  had  written  with  that  name,  and  all  their 
titles  attached,  to  be  painted  on  a  board  and  put 
up  at  the  cross-roads."1  Stevenson's  friend,  Mr.  H. 
J.  Moors  of  Apia,  in  whose  reminiscences  I  believe 
you  will  find  the  truest,  certainly  the  least  flattering, 
picture  of  Stevenson  in  Samoa  that  has  been  made, 
says  that  while  Stevenson  cut  no  great  figure  in  the 
minds  of  most  white  men  in  Samoa,  to  the  natives  he 
was  a  prophet.  "By  them  he  was  honored  as  a  man 
set  apart  from  his  fellows.  They  made  the  'Road  of 
Gratitude'  .  .  .  leading  up  to  his  house,  in 
memory  of  a  great  kindness;  and  when  he  died  they 
cut  the  track  up  the  steep  slope  of  Vaea  that  their 
Tusitala  might  be  buried  on  the  mountain-top  'where 
he  longed  to  be.'  "2 

III 

It  is  his  personal  relations  with  Polynesians, 
rather  than  an  objective  and  somewhat  anthropo- 
logical description  of  them,  that  forms  the  chief 
interest  of  his  volume  of  cruises  called  In  the  South 
Seas.  That  a  man  like  Stevenson  spent  five  years 
among  the  islands  is  one  of  the  important  facts  in 
the  progress  of  civilization  there.     Not  because  he 


1  Memories  of  Vailima,  by  Isobel  Strong  and  Lloyd  Os- 
bourne,  p.  95. 

2  With  Stevenson  in  Samoa,  p.  viii. 


THE    SOUTH    SEAS— VAILIMA      359 

was  bent  on  changing  barbaric  manners  and  cus- 
toms, so  many  of  which  are  gentility  itself  compared 
to  certain  others  in  Europe ;  but  because  he  was  bent 
on  creating  sympathy  between  men  of  different 
races.  The  value  to  the  world  of  such  documents  as 
Ori's  farewell  at  Tautira,  on  the  one  hand,  and,  on 
the  other,  the  chapters  about  the  cannibalism  that 
existed  next  door  to  Ori,  is  inestimable.  These  things 
are  done  with  an  equally  vivid  comprehension.  But 
the  book  as  a  whole  could  not  be  one  of  his  literary 
successes.  He  makes  the  mistake  of  attempting 
to  be  every  now  and  again  impersonal  instead  of 
impressionistic.  The  tone  of  the  thing  is  uneven, 
at  one  moment  like  an  encyclopaedia,  at  the  next 
like  a  letter.  The  probability  is  that  a  book  of  trav- 
els will  be  chiefly  interesting  as  it  reveals  the  trav- 
eler. An  impersonal  traveler,  is,  in  literature,  a  mere 
nonentity.  So  most  people,  who  are  not  curious 
about  Polynesian  customs,  find  In  the  South  Seas 
rather  dull  reading  whenever  the  author  is  not  in 
the  foreground.  Nearly  all  Stevenson's  writings 
represent  qualities,  like  romance  or  bravado  or 
fine  cheer,  that  were  especially  his  own.  A  few 
chapters  without  a  glimpse  of  the  familiar  gestures 
and  attitudes,  and  we  lose  interest.  In  the  South 
Seas  is  not  very  characteristic,  nor  does  it  go  very 
deep.  A  successful  struggle  for  vividness  is  accom- 
panied by  no  very  significant  comment.  It  is  the 
opposite  of  The  Amateur  Emigrant — the  opposite 
one  might  say,  of  .Stevenson  himself.  There  is  little 
emphasis,  little  exercise  of  choice. 


360  STEVENSON 

Yet  for  this  reason  it  may  outwardly  correspond 
all  the  better  to  the  medley  of  scenes  and  peoples  and 
customs  strewn  over  the  Pacific.  Volcanoes,  atolls, 
reefs,  the  roaring  trades,  the  shining  beaches,  the 
fish  beaked  like  parrots,  the  cannibal  queens,  Yankee 
traders,  missionaries,  pirates,  murderers  and  French 
gendarmes,  the  long  roll  of  Kanaka  sailors  and 
Chinese  cooks,  the  native  gifts  and  ceremonies,  the 
kava-feasts,  gin-feasts,  tapus,  the  melodious  dia- 
lects of  the  eastern  islands,  the  rugged  dialects  of 
the  western,  the  bar-rooms,  trade-rooms,  ships,  har- 
bors, whale-boats,  crowds  of  natives  in  the  cabin, 
crowds  of  drunken  natives  in  their  houses  on  shore, 
naked  and  black  and  wonderfully  tatooed,  or  dressed 
in  cotton  shifts  and  picture  hats — they  pass  in  pro- 
cession, now  gaily,  now  grimly.  But  the  whole 
thing  somehow  lacks  an  art,  an  art  indescribable, 
yet  one  that  another  writer  knew  well  how  to  use 
in  his  great  medley  epic  of  India — Kim. 

The  central  theme  of  Stevenson's  book,  so  far  as 
it  turns  out  to  have  one,  seems  to  be  a  study  of  the 
invasions  of  civilization  and  trade  into  the  barbarism 
of  the  islands.  And  here  lies  the  moral  of  it  all. 
Western  civilization,  clothes,  Christian  manners  do 
not  at  first  improve  the  barbaric  state.  They  only 
disrupt  and  confuse  it.  This  is  what  one  would 
expect.  Clothes  bring  ill  health  and  a  sense  of 
shame  but  do  not  diminish  sensuality.  Christian 
manners  seem  only  to  emphasize,  if  not  really  to 
add  a  new  field  to  the  native  superstitiousness  and 
unreliability  of  mind.    Trade  brings  in  new  diseases, 


THE    SOUTH    SEAS—VAILIMA      361 

new  forms  of  vice,  absurd  and  utterly  inartistic 
tastes.  Civilization,  as  it  reaches  these  barbarians, 
is  a  ridiculous  parody  of  what  we  think  it  to  con- 
sist in  at  home.  And  here  we  have  again,  in  some 
sense,  a  mirror  for  our  civilization,  showing  it  in  a 
new  light.  But  it  is  not  the  mirror  we  expect  an 
artist  to  hold  up  for  us,  the  mirror  which  Conrad, 
or  Kipling,  or  Pierre  Loti  has  held  up.  There  are 
not  many  pages  in  the  whole  volume  of  very  dis- 
tinguished observation.  There  is  a  continual  sym- 
pathy and  understanding  which  yet  fails  curiously 
to  be  very  illuminating.  Nor  does  Stevenson's  art 
of  description,  at  which  he  worked  so  consciously 
in  youth,  stand  him  in  very  good  stead  throughout 
the  whole  book.  The  best  of  it  is  undoubtedly 
the  description  of  the  king  of  Apemama  in  Part  IV. 
This  is  the  portrait  of  the  man  who  embodies  and 
appears  to  make  consonant  a  strange  medley  of 
traits — originality,  force,  intelligence,  utter  laziness, 
and  the  old  inherited  superstitions  and  fears.  Mean- 
while Chapter  IV  in  Part  I,  on  "Death,"  an  astound- 
ing testimony  to  the  inroads  of  civilized  diseases  on 
some  islands,  and  to  the  grim  necessity  of  keeping 
down  population  by  arbitrary  methods  on  others, 
should  make  a  wise  man  ponder.  (After  all,  the 
planet  is  an  island,  and  an  island  from  which  the  pos- 
sibility of  voyaging  seems  hardly  worth  considera- 
tion.) The  portrait  of  Vaekehu  and  Stanislao  in 
Chapter  IX,  the  "story  of  a  plantation"  in  Chapter 
XII — a  sample  that  shows  Stevenson's  aptitude  for 
those  various  pieces  of  historical  writing  he  de- 


362  STEVENSON 

signed  but  rarely  carried  out — the  approach  to  and 
description  of  the  atolls  of  the  dangerous  archi- 
pelago, especially  of  the  beach  at  Fakarava,  in  Part 
II,  are  all  remarkable  pieces  of  writing. 


IV 


Of  all  his  literary  work  after  1888,  it  is  quite 
possible  that  another  generation  will  find  the  Vailima 
Letters  to  Colvin  and  other  friends  the  outstanding 
product.  Joseph  Conrad,  whose  preference  for 
In  the  South  Seas  to  Treasure  Island  has  been  re- 
corded in  the  Biographical  Edition  of  the  letters, 
may  very  likely  prefer  the  letters  to  The  Ebb-Tide 
and  to  The  Wrecker.  Among  my  own  acquaintance, 
good  judges  of  what  has  lasting  interest  and  what 
has  not,  incline  that  way;  and  one  thing  about  the 
comparison  is  obvious — the  letters  could  be  re-read 
oftener.  Stevenson  himself,  toward  the  end  of  his 
life,  seems  to  have  preferred  biography  to  most 
fiction.1 

Like  all  of  Stevenson's  letters  these  from  Vailima 
are  among  the  pleasantest  in  English,  and  unlike 
his  earlier  letters  they  have  little  of  that  "author- 
ship" style  which  so  many  critics  have  objected  to. 
The  epistolary  authorship  style  is  precisely  like 
Stevenson  in  youth;  the  daily-news  manner  is  like 
him  at  the  age  of  forty.  His  letters  from  Mentone 
and  Edinburgh  show  his  enormous  interest  in  the 
art  of  observation.     His  letters  from  Samoa  show 


1  Letter  to  Gosse,  Biographical  Edition,  Vol.  IV,  p.  211. 


THE    SOUTH    SEAS— VAILIMA      363 

rather  his  untiring  fidelity  to  the  art  of  living.  At 
forty  in  Samoa  he  was  much  closer  to  life,  much 
more  implicated  in  his  environment,  than  he  was 
at  twenty-five  in  Edinburgh.  His  interest,  there- 
fore, is  less  in  the  telling,  more  in  the  thing  itself, 
which  always  means  with  a  writer  that  the  distinc- 
tion here  implied  has  ceased  to  exist  for  him. 

The  original  scheme  of  the  Vailima  letters  was 
not  quite  fulfilled.  Toward  the  end  of  1890  when 
Stevenson  was  settling  on  his  plantation,  he  began 
a  sort  of  diary  for  Colvin  which  soon  suggested  to 
them  the  idea  of  having  it  published  after  his  death. 
But  the  plan  was  no  sooner  definitely  in  mind  than 
all  regularity  in  making  a  diary  was  abandoned,  and 
we  have,  instead  of  an  interesting  diary,  a  more 
interesting  set  of  letters.  For  four  years  they  re- 
flect practically  every  phase  of  Stevenson's  life  and 
of  his  peculiar  surroundings. 

His  literary  work  is  still  Stevenson's  largest  em- 
ployment and  occupies  the  largest  place  in  his  cor- 
respondence. This  is  worthy  of  remark;  for,  on  the 
one  hand,  all  the  allurements  of  a  tropical  climate 
and  the  needs  of  health  beckoned  toward  a  life  of 
extreme  ease,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  fascinating 
pursuits  of  supervising,  building,  estate-making, 
agriculture,  called  especially  to  Stevenson's  enthu- 
siasm for  physical  tasks.  He  might  very  well  have 
lived  cheaply,  satisfied  himself  with  the  generous 
income  he  then  had,  and  attempted  no  very  long 
or  trying  flights.  And  had  he  done  so,  my  own 
opinion  is  that  we  should  be  the  gainers,  that  we 


364  STEVENSON 

should  have  more  tales  like  "The  Beach  of  Falesa" 
and  "The  Bottle  Imp,"  and  none  like  St.  Ives  and 
The  Wrecker.  But  Stevenson  seems  to  have  been 
little  influenced  mentally  by  the  climatic  relaxation. 
He  still  wrote  nervously  and  without  the  calm  full 
view.  His  energies  still  drew  him  into  tasks  where 
the  prolonged  vigorous  thinking  which  he  could  not 
command  could  alone  have  guided  him  successfully. 
As  a  critic,  ex  post  facto,  he  is,  however,  as  ur- 
bane, as  little  self-assured,  as  any  man  of  his  popu- 
lar eminence  whose  letters  we  possess.  He  is  no 
longer  greatly  deluded,  either  by  the  enthusiasm 
of  beginnings  or  by  the  fact  of  making  an  end, 
into  thinking  the  whole  as  good  as  it  should  be. 
It  is  only  over  Wiltshire  in  "The  Beach,"  the  moral- 
ity of  The  Ebb-Tide,  the  "queer  realism"  of  "The 
Isle  of  Voices,"  and  "The  Bottle  Imp,"  which  he 
rightly  estimates  as  one  of  his  "best  works  and 
ill  to  equal,"  that  he  expresses  himself  with  any 
degree  of  ultimate  satisfaction.  About  The  Ebb- 
Tide,  he  was  at  first  very  doubtful.  He  says  that 
there  seemed  to  be  "a  veil  of  words"  over  it,  and 
that  he  more  and  more  likes  "naked  writing,"  and 
yet  that  with  the  longing  for  full  color  the  veil 
comes  again.  The  Young  Chevalier  (St.  Ives),  he 
says,  is  in  very  full  color,  and  he  fears  it  for  that 
reason.  There  is  a  humorous  letter,  May  29- June 
18,  1893,  that  tells  of  his  struggles  to  finish  The 
Ebb-Tide,  how  he  can  not  get  beyond  page  ninety- 
three  of  his  manuscript,  how  he  struggles  up  to  page 
ninety-seven,  but  is  thrust  back,  how  he  touches 


THE   SOUTH   SEAS— VAILIMA      365 

page  one  hundred  and  one,  fighting  with  dyspepsia 
and  the  effects  of  tobacco  meanwhile,  and  at  last,  at 
4:15  p.  M.  on  June  fifth,  after  "13  days  about  as 
nearly  in  hell  as  a  man  could  expect  to  live  through," 
he  finishes  the  book. 

In  a  letter,  at  this  same  time,  to  S.  R.  Crockett, 
in  which  he  has  spoken  very  dubiously  of  both 
The  Ebb-Tide  and  Weir  of  Hermiston,  he  adds  this 
postscript :  "P.  S. — Be  it  known  to  this  fluent  gen- 
eration that  I,  R.  L.  S.,  in  the  forty-third  year  of 
my  age  and  the  twentieth  of  my  professional  life, 
wrote  twenty- four  pages  in  twenty-one  days,  work- 
ing from  six  to  eleven,  and  again  in  the  afternoon 
from  two  to  four  or  so,  without  fail  or  interrup- 
tion. .  .  .  Such  was  the  facility  of  this  prolific 
writer !"  It  might  be  expected  that  his  correspond- 
ents' enthusiasm  would  not  be  very  great  over  The 
Ebb-Tide,  and  Stevenson  so  far  accepted  Colvin's 
first  judgment  of  the  book  as  to  wish  Lloyd  Os- 
bourne's  name  removed  from  the  title  page  so  that 
responsibility  for  a  second-rate  thing  would  not 
rest  on  his  young  shoulders.  But  on  another  read- 
ing, Colvin  somewhat  changed  his  mind,  and  Mr. 
Osbourne  has  his  share  of  the  credit.  When  Ste- 
venson read  the  "tract,"  as  he  called  it,  after  pub- 
lication, he  apparently  realized  more  clearly  its  im- 
port than  he  had  been  able  to  do  before.  When 
the  mail  brought  the  book,  he  retired  with  it  and 
read  it  all  before  going  to  bed.  He  "did  not  dream 
it  was  near  as  good" ;  and  was  afraid  he  thought  it 
excellent — "a  little  indecision  about  Attwater,  not 
much." 


366  STEVENSON 

About  St.  Ives  he  has,  finally,  little  good  to  say — 
in  spite  of  the  enthusiasm  of  labor  recorded  so  de- 
lightfully in  the  memoirs  of  his  amanuensis.  "A 
tissue  of  adventures,"  Stevenson  calls  St.  Ives,  with 
"no  style  in  particular" — a  remark  which  shows 
that  a  distinct  tone  without  much  meaning  was  not 
style  for  R.  L.  S.  "No  philosophical  pith  under  the 
yarn,"  probably  explains  what  he  means  by  this. 
"No  philosophy,  no  destiny  to  it,"  he  says  again — 
"some  of  the  happenings  very  good  in  themselves, 
I  believe,  but  none  of  them  bildende,  none  of  them 
constructive,  except  in  so  far  as  they  make  up  a 
kind  of  sham  picture  of  the  time,  all  in  italics  and 
all  out  of  drawing." 

Of  David  Balfour,  though  he  wrote  Mrs.  Sitwell 
that  it  was  his  high- water  mark — a  judgment  based 
on  his  great  partiality  for  the  character  of  David — 
he  could  also  say  to  W.  H.  Low  that  for  the  "top 
flower"  of  a  man's  life  it  seemed  inadequate :  "Small 
is  the  word;  it  is  a  small  age  and  I  am  of  it."  The 
Wrecker,  he  tells  Henry  James,  is  a  machine,  a  po- 
lice machine;  "but  I  believe  the  end  is  one  of  the 
most  genuine  butcheries  in  literature."  By  this  he 
probably  refers  to  the  pastoral  denouement  at  Bar- 
bizon  and  the  way  in  which  all  the  villains  in  the 
story  go  scot  free.  "It  didn't  set  up  to  be  a  book, 
only  a  long  tough  yarn,"  he  explained.1 

Many  such  rather  casual  remarks,  taken  together 


1  Every  one  who  is  interested  in  these  books  should  read 
what  Stevenson  has  to  say  regarding  collaboration  and  the  art 
of  collaborate  character  drawing,  in  a  letter  to  his  cousin  Bob. 
Letters,  Biographical  Edition,  IV,  p.  355. 


THE    SOUTH    SEAS— VAILIMA      367 

with  his  acute  and  generous  praise  of  contem- 
poraries— of  Kipling,  Barrie,  Weyman,  Conan 
Doyle — show  Stevenson  as  a  man  unusually  free 
from  that  vanity  of  authorship  which  is  often  attrib- 
uted to  him.  It  has,  in  fact,  been  the  habit  of  recent 
criticisms  to  confuse  a  type  of  vanity  which  he 
singularly  lacked  with  the  delightful  vanity  which 
Stevenson,  the  invalid,  displayed  on  all  occasions 
in  recounting  his  triumphs  of  social  or  physical 
prowess,  or  in  his  similar  pride  in  putting  through 
the  manual  labor  of  book-making  under  trying  con- 
ditions. His  letter  to  George  Meredith,  which  we 
have  quoted,  is  the  depth  of  that  tone;  and  its 
lighter  accents  are  audible  in  all  those  descriptions 
of  his  farm  labors,  his  management  of  domestic 
affairs,  and  his  position  as  adviser  to  the  natives. 
It  was  part  of  Stevenson's  character  that,  being 
denied  a  normal  social  and  physical  life,  he  should 
indulge  a  little  bravado  in  that  field  whenever  the 
chance  offered.  This  explains  the  tone,  the  per- 
sonality, of  his  earliest  books  of  travel,  and  now 
once  more  it  furnishes  ^a  zest  for  writing  long  let- 
ters about  his  adventures  at  Vailima. 

In  one  of  the  first  of  them  he  has  made  a  very 
poignant  observation  that  all  professional  literary 
men  will  understand.  He  has  been  describing  his 
enthusiasm  for  outdoor  work,  weeding,  clearing, 
path-making,  the  oversight  of  laborers,  which  last 
delight,  he  says,  "becomes  a  disease."  "And  the 
strange  thing  that  I  mark  is  this:  If  I  go  out  and 
make  sixpense,  bossing  my  labourers  and  plying 


368  STEVENSON 

the  cutlass  or  the  spade,  idiot  conscience  applauds 
me;  if  I  sit  in  the  house  and  make  twenty  pounds, 
idiot  conscience  wails  over  my  neglect  and  the  day 
wasted." 

It  is  typical  of  Stevenson  that  he  should  make  a 
duty  and  a  lark  out  of  his  labors.  He  was  especially 
fond  of  exploring  the  thick  hammock  on  his  estate, 
either  making  a  rough  path  with  a  machette  or  fol- 
lowing up  one  of  the  streams  to  its  source.  To  come 
back  covered  with  mud  and  perspiration,  to  bathe 
and  rest,  and  then  concoct  an  elaborate  salad  for 
dinner,  was  one  of  the  durable  satisfactions  of  life. 
He  has  a  great  deal  to  say  about  the  eccentricities 
of  his  horse  Jack,  and  more  about  the  follies  of  his 
native  servants,  Sosimo,  beautiful  Faauma  of  the 
light  heart,  the  madness  of  Paatalise  and  its  relief 
by  a  mysterious  island  drug,  "pure  Rider  Haggard," 
the  exact  nature  of  which  his  foreman  Lafaele  kept 
a  secret.  There  is  an  amazing  tolerance  of  native 
ways,  of  their  lies,  stealing,  and  other  tricks  with 
which  they  passed  the  time.  But  other  testimony 
than  Stevenson's  shows  the  respect  in  which  he  and 
his  easy-going  household  were  held,  and  the  ulti- 
mate good  which  radiated  from  that  center  of  hu- 
man-heartedness,  even  to  neighboring  islands. 
Against  a  background  of  farm  incidents — animals 
always  escaping  from  the  compound,  men  injuring 
themselves  in  a  score  of  ways,  Mrs.  R.  L.  S.  fre- 
quently ill;  and  to  the  accompaniment  of  bursts  of 
tropic  rain  "demonizing"  on  the  iron  roof,  or  threat- 
ened hurricanes,   Stevenson  worked  at  literature. 


THE   SOUTH    SEAS— VAILIMA      369 

Life  did  not  lack  for  that  excitement  and  variety 
which  he  seemed  to  require,  and  many  circumstances, 
which  for  others  are  so  often  negative  in  their  ef- 
fect, he  used  on  the  positive  side  of  existence.  This 
is  perhaps  the  last  word  that  may  be  said  concerning 
an  optimist's  character. 

Among  the  more  serious  features  of  the  corre- 
spondence is  the  constant  evidence  of  Stevenson's 
part  in  local  political  affairs.  Colvin,  who  rather 
deprecates  this,  has  yet  given  a  very  concise  and 
clear  summary  in  the  fourth  volume  of  letters  in 
the  Biographical  Edition,  of  the  facts  in  the  situa- 
tion. There  is  a  more  elaborate  and  equally  clear 
account  in  Moors' s  book.  Armed  with  these  ex- 
planations the  reader  has  no  difficulty  in  following 
Stevenson's  references.  They  assume  a  large  im- 
portance; and  anybody  with  a  real  knowledge  of 
Stevenson's  mind  will  appreciate  how  deeply  inter- 
ested he  could  be  in  the  questions  of  justice,  espe- 
cially of  justice  to  the  natives,  which  were  involved 
in  the  international  disputes  at  Samoa.  The  Foot- 
note  to  History  and  the  Letters  to  "The  Times" 
are  his  real  documents  in  the  matter.  But  perhaps 
his  pictures,  in  the  letters,  of  Cedarkrantz  and  von 
Pilsach,  the  local  officials,  but  really  two  characters 
out  of  opera  buffe,  and  his  many  prophecies  as  to 
the  outcome  of  entanglements,  are  more  interesting 
to  the  casual  reader.  The  Polynesian  Stevenson 
seems  to  have  known  instinctively.  Stanislao  at 
Nukuhiva  had  flatteringly  told  him  that  if  he  would 
remain  there  he  would  be  obeyed  throughout  the 


370  STEVENSON 

islands.  Mataafe,  the  rebel  chief  who  came  into 
power  after  Stevenson's  death,  and  who  had  been 
his  great  friend  among  the  Samoans,  regarded  Tusi- 
tala  as  his  wisest  adviser. 

The  most  interesting  single  incidents  in  the  letters 
are  the  expeditions  to  native  villages,  and  the  feasts 
at  Vailima.  In  August,  1892,  he  took  Lady  Jersey, 
incognito,  to  visit  Mataafe's  court,  where  they  spent 
the  night  and  were  honored,  after  breakfast,  by  a 
royal  kava  ceremony  and  much  speech-making.  At 
Vailima  Stevenson  entertained  very  lavishly — for 
the  sake  of  the  natives  not  least.  Moors,  who  had 
a  great  deal  to  do  with  Stevenson's  finances,  thinks 
the  household  expenses  amounted  to  some  six  thou- 
sand five  hundred  dollars  a  year,  and  that  Stevenson 
spent  in  all  about  twenty  thousand  dollars  on  land 
and  houses,  which  was,  however,  not  more  than  one 
year's  income  from  his  books  at  this  time.  The 
great  hall,  sixty  feet  long  and  forty  feet  wide, 
lined  and  ceiled  with  California  redwood,  might 
have  had  an  air  of  considerable  magnificence;  but 
it  seems  to  have  been  curiously  rather  than  beauti- 
fully furnished.  Here  the  white  citizens  of  Apia, 
the  natives,  the  seamen  and  officers  of  cruising  war- 
ships, especially  of  H.  M.  S.  Curacoa,  were  con- 
stantly welcomed.  In  photographs  in  Mr.  Moors's 
book,  in  Hammerton's  St  evens  oniana,  and  in  many 
magazine  articles,  you  may  see  those  medley  assem- 
blages and  realize  from  them  more  vividly  than  in 
any  other  way  the  curious  position  of  Tusitala,  the 
Scot,  in  this  far  quarter  of  the  globe. 


THE    SOUTH    SEAS— VAILIMA      371 

In  regard  both  to  the  outward  facts  of  this  final 
period  and  to  the  humors  of  his  personality,  the 
Vailima  letters  give  a  singularly  complete  impression 
which  in  no  essential  details  is  modified  by  the 
published  gossip  of  visitors.  To  a  student  of  his 
character  these  letters  thus  come  as  a  crowning 
satisfaction.  Stevenson  was  what  he  seemed  to  be, 
a  man  intensely  interested  in  all  the  little  details  of 
immediate  circumstance.  Hence  a  man  of  very 
varying  humor.  He  had  none  of  the  serenity  of 
aloofness,  none  of  the  superiorities  of  preoccupa- 
tion, and  also  none  of  its  narrowness.  He  met  life 
constantly.  He  never  shirked.  He  had  a  dozen 
levels  on  which  to  meet  it  without  ever  reaching 
either  pettiness  or  greatness.  His  friends  seem  not 
to  have  thought  of  him  as  a  great  man.  Greatness 
has  something  daemonic,  something  above  and  be- 
yond our  every-day  scrutiny.  Greatness  is  a  power- 
ful and  a  rare  inspiration.  It  points  toward  the 
stars.  In  place  of  greatness  Stevenson  embodied, 
to  a  rare  yet  always  comprehensible  extent,  human 
sympathy,  which  points  toward  the  more  immediate 
mysteries  of  daily  life. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


LOOKING  DOWN   FROM   THE  MILL 


\  CCORDING  to  wise  men  of  all  sorts  there  are 
./"Xonly  two  forms  of  happiness  in  this  world: 
the  hopeful  happiness  of  romance  and  the  satisfied 
happiness  of  success.  The  web  of  life  is  made 
from  their  incessant  interweaving.  But  while  suc- 
cess is  nominally  the  brighter  strand  in  the  pattern, 
the  strand  by  which  we  oftenest  recognize  the  pat- 
tern, it  may  be  disputed  which  more  strengthens 
the  texture  of  the  whole.  Success,  which  puts  the 
ultimate  material  value  on  the  product,  can,  of 
course,  be  thought  of  as  the  ultimate  purpose  for 
which  it  has  been  made;  but  some  people  still  be- 
lieve that  romance  is  the  more  essential  element  in 
its  making  and  the  truer  measure  of  its  worth.  In 
less  figurative  language  it  may  be  said  that  one  who 
lives  for  the  sake  of  becoming  a  finished  product  is 
a  devotee  of  success;  and  that  one  who  prefers  liv- 
ing to  the  material  satisfactions  of  life  is  a  follower 
of  romance. 

This  is  a  very  broad  definition,  and  by  it  you  will 
no  doubt  find  many  triflers,  mediocrities,  and  pau- 

372 


LOOKING  DOWN  FROM  THE  MILL    373 

pers  already  arrived  on  the  docks  of  success,  and 
many  experts,  geniuses,  and  millionaires,  still  voy- 
aging on  the  ship  of  romance.  On  the  whole,  are 
not  the  followers  of  romance  the  happier  men? 
Their  wisdom  begins  where  the  others'  wisdom 
leaves  off,  and  their  satisfactions,  being  satisfactions 
in  eternal  expectancy,  are  really  the  more  constant. 
They  more  rarely  come  to  an  end.  Is  not  their 
happiness,  then,  bound  to  go  beyond  the  others'? 
For  they  will  be  satisfied  with  nothing  short  of  the 
universe,  while  it  is  conceivable  that  the  devotees 
of  success  could  be  persuaded  to  limit  themselves 
to  the  planet. 

It  does  no  good  to  say  that  this  is  mere  talk,  and 
that  since  both  types  are  actually  limited  to  the 
planet,  and  hence  must  ultimately  be  practical  and 
worldly,  they  will  ultimately  be  one  and  the  same. 
Is  not  the  immediate  reply  to  this  that  their  most 
striking  difference  is  observable  in  this  very  connec- 
tion? The  devotees  of  success  are  quite  capable  of 
filling  the  planet  with  themselves,  and  can  be  seen 
sitting  down  daily  to  take  stock  of  that  eminently 
practical  achievement.  But  the  followers  of  ro- 
mance have  already  begun  to  deduce  the  universe, 
like  the  gods,  from  their  station  in  the  ether.  That 
nothing  may  ever  be  done  with  their  deductions  to 
increase  the  stock  of  planetary  success  is  quite  beside 
the  point.  Even  if  a  thousand  generations  hence  the 
romancers  still  have  not  ascertained  the  practical 
value  of  their  guesses,  they  will  yet  prove  wiser  than 
the  devotees.     For  beside  the  devotees'   worldly 


374  STEVENSON 

wisdom,  the  profound  depth  of  the  romancers'  ex- 
perimental ignorance  will  be  as  an  inexhaustible 
well  of  light. 

But  let  us  reduce  the  scale  to  something  com- 
mensurate with  our  unepical  imaginations.  Happi- 
ness has  often  been  described,  and  that  by  very 
wise  old  men,  as  of  the  valley.  Toward  the  end  of 
life,  or  at  least  after  the  storm  and  stress,  it  seems 
likely  that  a  man  will  hit  on  this  homely  figure,  and, 
fooling  himself  by  a  word,  carry  us  along  to  be- 
lieve that  youth  is  less  happy  than  age,  when  he 
means  only  that  it  is  less  satisfied.  Doctor  Johnson 
and  Boswell  were  one  day  driving  in  a  post-chaise. 
"Sir/1  said  Boswell,  "you  observed  one  day  at 
General  Oglethorpe's  that  a  man  is  never  happy  for 
the  present  but  when  he  is  drunk.  Will  you  not  add 
— or  when  driving  rapidly  in  a  post-chaise?"  "No, 
sir,"  said  Johnson,  "you  are  driving  rapidly  from 
something  or  to  something." 

You  will  recall  that  in  Doctor  Johnson's  famous 
story  of  Rasselas,  the  Happy  Valley  is  a  place  of 
perfect  content — in  all  respects  save  one.  There  is 
curiosity  about  the  world  and  no  way  of  satisfying 
it  from  afar.  But  after  Rasselas,  urged  on  by  the 
tales  of  a  poet,  has  made  his  escape  from  the  valley 
and  toured  the  world  in  search  of  another  basis  for 
human  felicity  than  that  of  inaction,  he  finally  re- 
turns satisfied  that  there  is  none,  satisfied,  in  short, 
that  happiness  exists  only  in  satisfaction  undisturbed 
by  curiosity  and  search.  This  is  the  happiness  of 
the  valley;  and  the  valley  is  not  a  place  from  which 


LOOKING  DOWN  FROM  THE  MILL    375 

to  contemplate  the  world,  but  in  which  to  grow  ig* 
no  rant  of  it. 

A  hundred  years  later,  the  orthodox  picture  of 
happiness  has  considerably  altered — just  as  the 
orthodox  notion  of  eternity  as  a  heaven  of  perfect 
bliss  where  nothing  new  ever  happens  has  grown 
into  a  belief  in  eternal  evolution.  So,  from  our 
point  of  view,  Stevenson's  fable  for  philosophers 
of  happiness,  "Will  o'  the  Mill,"  is  a  more  reason- 
ably constructed  affair  than  was  Doctor  Johnson's. 
Stevenson  has  also  another  advantage  than  that  of  a 
later  century — the  advantage  of  writing  his  fable 
early  in  his  own  career  instead  of  in  old  age.  "Will 
o'  the  Mill,"  on  his  hillside  above  the  plain,  is,  at  all 
events,  favorably  situated.  He  is  given  a  fair  start. 
He  is  not  buried  in  the  prejudices  of  a  valley.  Nor 
is  he  so  far  dehumanized  as  to  think  satisfaction 
possible  in  a  state  that  bars  all  hope.  The  Happy 
Valley  was  a  self-contradiction.  The  Mill,  how- 
ever, is  the  apex  of  consistent  idealism.  It  is  a 
superb  vantage  point.  The  world  is  ever  before  it. 
It  looks  out  over  the  world,  understands  the  world, 
and  yet  is  never  of  the  world.  That  is  its  ideal 
position,  its  strong  unpractical  advantage.  It  sus- 
tains every  hope  but  will  risk  no  failures.  Hence  it 
is  a  place  in  which  to  grow  worldly-wise  without 
experience — an  illuminating  paradox,  not  an  impos- 
sibility. It  is  not  far  different  from  our  idea  of  the 
position  of  God  in  that  spiritual  wisdom  toward 
which  we  strive  to  rise  out  of  our  terrible  experi- 
ence. 


376  STEVENSON 

All  life  flows  down  past  the  Mill  toward  experi- 
ence. Only  a  little  rises  to  return.  Life  yearns  for 
the  plain.  And  the  image  of  this  for  Will  was  the 
running  water  that  went  singing  over  the  weir.  The 
romance  of  the  distant  world,  the  lure  of  the  open 
road,  this  feeling  is  for  him,  the  foundation  of 
knowledge  and  the  explanation  of  history.  "The 
running  water  carried  his  desires  along  with  it  as 
he  dreamed  over  its  fleeting  surface."  But  his  wis- 
dom lay  in  images.  The  fat  philosopher  who  took 
him  out  under  the  stars  had  shown  him  that  actual 
experience  could  at  the  most  cover  but  the  smallest 
fraction  of  a  man's  knowledge,  and  often  proved 
only  a  dulling  of  the  imagination  at  that.  Why  not, 
then,  know  all  life  ideally  as  we  know  the  stars? 
This  one  lesson  taught  Will  more  about  the  world 
than  Imlac  had  been  able  to  show  Rasselas  in  their 
entire  journey.  So  Will  increased  in  wisdom  till  he 
was  the  teacher  both  of  the  many  who  were  descend- 
ing toward  the  plain  and  of  those  few  who  returned. 

Will  had  already  discovered  that  these  men  of 
action  were  not  his  opposites  just  because  they  went 
down  into  the  plain.  Indeed  they  were  not  his  op- 
posites at  all.  They  were  merely  his  complements. 
He  could  deduce  them,  as  it  were,  from  himself. 
His  opposites  he  perhaps  saw  pictured  in  the  fish  in 
the  stream.  The  stream  flowed  ever  down  into  the 
plain;  but  the  fish  kept  looking  patiently  in  their 
own  blind  direction  up-hill.  And  yet  Will  was  like 
the  fish  in  one  respect.  He  never  changed  his  the- 
ory; he  never  experimented.    When  he  fell  in  love 


LOOKING  DOWN  FROM  THE  MILL    377 

he  perceived  only  that  by  patient  waiting  happiness 
had  come  to  his  door.  He  had  not  sought  it  out. 
It  was  like  an  asset  of  contemplation,  like  a  new 
hope,  and  then  merely  like  an  idea.  So  he  realized 
that  to  possess  it  bodily  would  be  directly  against 
his  whole  philosophy.  Even  in  regard  to  marriage, 
he  therefore  decided  to  remain  a  sheer  romancer. 
This  was  his  highest  accomplishment  and  also  the 
height  of  his  vanity.  At  first  he  could  not  see  that 
he  had  make  a  mistake.  But  presently  the  object  of 
his  romance  married  and  then  died,  and  he  was  left 
with  his  delicious  fancies  turned  to  stone  upon  his 
soul.  He  was  not,  however,  disillusionized.  In- 
stead he  made  one  of  his  wise  sayings:  "When  I 
was  a  boy,',  he  said,  "I  was  a  bit  puzzled  and  hardly 
knew  whether  it  was  myself  or  the  world  that  was 
curious  and  worth  looking  into.  Now,  I  know  it  is 
myself,  and  stick  to  that."  The  idealist's  refusal 
to  act  and  to  suffer  results  in  a  sort  of  cold  wisdom 
that  deadens  the  passions  and  leaves  introspection  to 
take  the  place  of  the  greater  romance  of  living. 

In  the  end  Will's  lost  experiences  rise  about  him, 
like  exhalations  from  the  flowers  of  his  garden 
which  he  had  always  refused  to  pluck,  holding  that 
his  pleasure  in  them  was  greater  where  they  were. 
He  knows,  as  he  welcomes  death,  that  he  has  missed 
the  fragrance  of  life. 

II 

"What  we  want  to  see  is  one  who  can  breast  into 
the  world,  do  a  man's  works,  and  still  preserve  his 


378  STEVENSON 

first  and  pure  enjoyment  of  existence,"  Stevenson 
quotes  from  Thoreau,  and  he  has  made  the  follow- 
ing maxims  himself : 

"Acts  may  be  forgiven :  not  even  God  can  forgive 
the  hanger-back." 

"No  art  is  true  in  this  sense:  none  can  'compete 
with  life' !  not  even  history." 

"There  is  more  adventure  in  the  life  of  the  work- 
ingman  who  descends  as  a  common  soldier  in  the 
battle  of  life,  than  that  of  the  millionaire  who  sits 
apart  in  an  office,  like  Von  Moltke,  and  only  directs 
the  manoeuvres  by  telegraph." 

"To  be  truly  happy  is  a  question  of  how  we  be- 
gin, and  not  of  how  we  end,  of  what  we  want,  and 
not  of  what  we  have." 

"An  aspiration  is  a  joy  forever,  a  possession  as 
solid  as  a  landed  estate,  a  fortune  which  we  can 
never  exhaust  and  which  gives  us  year  by  year  a 
revenue  of  pleasurable  activity." 

"There  is  indeed  one  element  in  human  destiny 
that  not  blindness  itself  can  controvert:  whatever 
else  we  are  intended  to  do,  we  are  not  intended  to 
succeed;  failure  is  the  fate  allotted." 

So  Stevenson,  the  cheer  fullest  man  of  our  time, 
turns  out  to  be  a  pessimist  after  all ;  and  these  sen- 
tences, each  taken  from  a  different  one  of  his  works, 
represent  fairly  his  romantic,  yet  pessimistic,  creed. 
For  his  creed  has  nothing  to  do  at  all  with  a  smug 
optimism.    The  assertion  of  the  necessity  of  strug- 


[LOOKING  POWN  FROM  THE  MILL    379 

gle,  the  denial  that  success  is  a  valid  object— there 
it  is,  consistent  and  paradoxical. 

Would  you  hear  Stevenson's  description  of  suc- 
cess ?  It  is  particularly  interesting  because  it  comes 
just  before  that  sentence  about  failure  being  the 
fate  allotted. 

'To  be  honest,  to  be  kind — to  earn  a  little  and 
to  spend  a  little  less,  to  make  upon  the  whole  a 
family  happier  for  his  presence,  to  renounce  when 
that  shall  be  necessary  and  not  be  embittered,  to 
keep  a  few  friends,  but  these  without  capitulation 
— above  all,  on  the  same  grim  condition,  to  keep 
friends  with  himself — here  is  a  task  for  all  that  a 
man  has  of  fortitude  and  delicacy.  He  has  an  am- 
bitious soul  who  would  ask  more;  he  has  a  hopeful 
spirit  who  should  look  in  such  an  enterprise  to  be 
successful." 

We  take  this  as  Stevenson's  description  of  suc- 
cess. It  is  really  his  description  of  failure.  It  is, 
he  says,  the  best  we  can  do,  for  we  are  intended  to 
fail.  The  romanticist  always  fails.  His  great  plans 
vanish  and  all  that  remains  for  self -congratulation 
out  of  the  storm  and  stress  is  his  humanity,  his  cul- 
ture. Beware  of  material  success.  Beware  also  of 
sheer  intellectualism,  that  it  does  not  leave  us  high 
and  dry  without  the  human  touch,  without  the  little 
local  record  behind  us. 

But  while  failure  is  the  fate  allotted,  failure  in 
anything  great,  or  even  in  anything  small  that  has 
required  our  finest  effort,  is  not  just  failure.    It  is 


380  STEVENSON 

romance,  which  is  the  greatest  thing  in  life. 
Against  the  satisfactions  of  mediocrity,  of  material 
success  that  constructs  no  further  vision,  Stevenson 
directs  a  withering  satire.  On  the  other  hand,  to- 
ward the  dreamer  like  Will,  even  though  he  lives 
solely  to  cherish  his  dreams,  Stevenson  is  more  in- 
dulgent. For  such  a  man  is  a  teacher  not  without 
wisdom  and  not  without  charm.  But  the  true  life 
is  that  of  the  follower  of  romance — a  far  goal,  a 
long  effort,  a  life  requiring  infinite  pride,  patience, 
and  humbleness.  And  meanwhile,  knowing  that  the 
goal  is  never  to  be  attained,  the  follower  of  romance 
sees  also  that  he  must  be  governed  by  the  rule  of 
daily  life:  "To  be  honest,  to  be  kind,"  to  give  his 
time  to  founding  the  efforts  of  other  men  who  will 
some  day  go  further  than  he.  For  it  is  only  thus 
that  one  honestly  joins  himself  to  posterity. 

Stevenson's  tomb  on  the  summit  of  Vaea  Moun- 
tain looks  far  across  the  waters  of  the  Pacific.  It  is 
a  place  from  which  to  contemplate  the  world,  a  re- 
mote and  isolated  place  peculiarly  fitting  for  the  last 
repose  of  a  great  adventurer.  But  it  is  not  a  lonely 
place.  For  thither  are  directed  the  thoughts  of  a 
million  friends  whom  his  adventures  have  made  for 
him.  He  came  to  this  distant  grave  bearing  with 
him  the  love  of  more  fellow  men  than  perhaps  has 
ever  been  the  fortune  of  a  writer,  and  that,  because 
his  life  was  a  superbly  successful  effort  to  enjoy 
myriad  experience  among  his  fellow  men  without 
disillusionment.  In  most  untoward  circumstances 
he  had  found  the  world  good;  he  left  it  better.    He 


LOOKING  DOWN  FROM  THE  MILL    381 

had  proved  his  theorem  of  the  livableness  of  life. 
This  man  who  was  carried  to  his  grave  on  the  shoul- 
ders of  Samoan  chiefs,  as  if  he  were  a  king,  had 
there,  at  the  hands  of  an  alien  people,  not  only  the 
final  tribute  to  a  European  literary  fame,  but  a  most 
perfect  acknowledgment  of  his  citizenship  in  the 
world. 


382  STEVENSON 


POSTSCRIPT 

"In  the  highlands,  in  the  country  places, 

Where  the  old  plain  men  have  rosy  faces, 

And  the  young  fair  maidens 

Quiet  eyes ; 

Where  essential  silence  cheers  and  blesses, 

And  for  ever  in  the  hill-recesses 

Her  more  lovely  music 

Broods  and  dies. 

"O  to  mount  again  where  erst  I  haunted ; 

Where  the  old  red  hills  are  bird-enchanted, 

And  the  low  green  meadows 

Bright  with  sward ; 

And  when  even  dies,  the  million-tinted, 

And  the  night  has  come,  and  planets  glinted, 

Lo !  the  valley  hollow, 

Lamp-bestarred. 

"O  to  dream,  O  to  awake  and  wander 
There,  and  with  delight  to  take  and  render, 
Through  the  trance  of  silence, 
Quiet  breath ; 

Lo !  for  there,  among  the  flowers  and  grasses, 
Only  the  mightier  movement  sounds  and  passes ; 
Only  winds  and  rivers, 
Life  and  death." 


PASSAGES  FROM  STEVENSON'S 
WORKS 


PASSAGES   FROM   STEVENSON'S 
WORKS 

PAGE 

"The  Manse,"  Memories  and  Portraits     ....  14-18 

"The  Foreigner  at  Home,"  Memories  and  Portraits  20 

"Shadow  March,"  A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses    .     .  21 
"The  Land  of  Story-Books,"  A  Child's  Garden  of 

Verses 22 

"A  Penny  Plain,"  Memories  and  Portraits     .     .     .  25-26 

"Pastoral,"  Memories  and  Portraits 38-39 

"Memoirs  of  an  Islet,"  Memories  and  Portraits      .  43-44 

"An  Apology  for  Idlers,"  Virginibus  Puerisque  .     .  48-50 

"Aes  Triplex,"  Virginibus  Puerisque 74-75 

"An  Apology  for  Idlers,"  Virginibus  Puerisque  .     .  94-95 

"Fontainebleau,"  Across  the  Plains 102-106 

"The  Inn  at  La  Fere,"  An  Inland  Voyage  ....  109-112 

"The  Chinese  Car,"  Across  the  Plains 121-124 

"A  Novel  of  Dumas's,"  Memories  and  Portraits  .     .  162-163 

"The  Old  Sea  Dog,"  Treasure  Island 165-176 

"The  Flight  in  the  Heather,"  Kidnapped     ....  183-189 

"Eileen  Aros,"  The  Merry  Men  .......  196-201 

"Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,"  The  Merry  Men  .     .     .  252-255 

"Francois  Villon,"  Familiar  Studies 259-264 

"A  Lodging  for  the  Night,"  New  Arabian  Nights    .  266-295 

"Providence  and  the  Guitar,"  New  Arabian  Nights  .  297-311 

"The  Treasure  of  Franchard,"  The  Merry  Men  .     .  312-331 


385 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Across  the  Plains,  68,  114,  116,  120-121,  quoted  121-124. 

Addison,  Joseph,  9. 

"Adventures  of  Jan  van  Steen,  The,"  24. 

"Aes  Triplex,"  68-70,  quoted  74-75,  76,  86,  256,  331. 

Amateur  Emigrant,  The,  68,  114,  116-119,  126,  359. 

"Apology  for  Idlers,  An,"  quoted  48-50  and  94-95,  256,  311, 

331. 
Appeal  to  the  Clergy  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  An,  83. 
"Autumn  Effect,  An,"  83,  99. 

Babington,  Professor  Churchill,  65. 

Baildon,  H.  B.,  quoted  51. 

Balfour,  Dr.  George  W.,  138. 

Balfour,  Graham,  Life  of  Stevenson,  23,  28,  54,  143,  147. 

Balfour,  Jane,  26. 

Balfour,  Rev.  Dr.  Lewis  (grandfather  of  R.  L.  S.),  14-18. 

Ballads,  The,  355. 

Bancroft,  George,  History  of  the  United  States,  120. 

Barbizon,  101-106. 

Barrie,  J.  M.,  79,  367. 

Baxter,  Charles,  63,  145,  164. 

"Beach  of  Falesa,  The,"  28,  202,  336,  338-342,  364. 

Bennet,  Stevenson's  doctor  at  Nice,  76. 

Bennett,  Arnold,  80. 

"Beranger,"  85. 

Black  Arrow,  The,  32,  148,  179-180. 

Black  Tulip,  The,  245. 

"Body  Snatcher,  The,"  148,  202. 

Book  of  Snobs,  The,  56. 

Borrow,  George,  104. 

Boswell,  J,  374. 

"Bottle  Imp,  The,"  202,  347,  364. 

Burns,  Robert,  19,  84. 

"Burns,  Robert,  Some  Aspects  of,"  quoted  134. 

Byron,  Lord,  89. 

Caine,  Hall,  79. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  151. 

Casco,  The,  349,  350. 

Chapman,  John  Jay,  "Robert  Louis  Stevenson,"  57. 

"Chapter  on  Dreams,  A,"  26,  28-31,  249. 

"Character  of  Dogs,  The,"  35,  149. 

389 


390  INDEX 


"Charles  d'Orleans,"  85,  134. 

Chesterton,  Gilbert,  244. 

Child's  Garden  of  Verses,  A,  quoted  21-22,  148,  149. 

"Child's  Play,"  26,  86,  256. 

"Choice  of  a  Profession,  The,"  153. 

Christmas  Sermon,  A,"  68,  quoted  71,  76,  355. 

Clark,  Doctor  (Sir)  Andrew,  66. 

"Coast  of  Fife,  The,"  42. 

Colinton  Manse,  14. 

"College  Magazine,  A,"  56,  87-88. 

Colvin,  Sir  Sidney:  52,  63,  65,  76,  81,  128,  137.  191,  355,  362, 

365,  369 ;  letters  to,  154. 
Conrad,  Joseph,  80,  165,  244,  245,  336,  362. 
Copeland,  C.  T.,  100,  140. 
Cornhill,  The,  83,  86,  258. 
Cowper,  William,  89. 
"Crabbed  Age  and  Youth,"  45,  86. 
Cunningham,  Alison,  28. 

Damien,  Father,  352,  355. 

David  Balfour,  182. 

Deacon  Brodie,  86. 

De  Morgan,  William,  80. 

Devonia,  The,  116. 

Dickens,  Charles,  79,  246. 

Don  Quixote,  154,  248. 

Doyle,  Conan,  367. 

Dumas,  A.,  140,  181,  190,  235,  245. 

Dynamiter,  The,  146,  241,  243. 

Ebb  Tide,  The,  178,  193,  244,  336,  342-347,  354,  362,  365. 

"Education  of  an  Engineer,  The,"  35,  42,  43. 

"El  Dorado,"  quoted  71,  86. 

Eliot,  George,  79,  247. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  333. 

"English  Admirals,"  86. 

Epictetus,  333. 

Equator,  The,  351,  356. 

Fairchild,  Charles,  147. 

Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books,  133,  148. 

"Family  of  Engineers,  A,"  35,  42,  355. 

Ferrier,  James,  63. 

"Fontainebleau,"  quoted  102-103,  quoted  104-106,  136. 

Foot-note  to  History,  A,  352,  355,  356,  369. 

"Foreigner  at  Home,  The,"  quoted  20. 

"Forest  Notes,"  84,  87,  94,  101,  136. 

Forest  State,  The,  128. 

France,  Anatole,  248. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  57. 


INDEX  391 

Galsworthy,  John,  80. 

Goethe,  247. 

Gosse,  Edmund,  52,  79,  126,  128,  191,  192. 

"Gossip  on  Romance,  A,"  26,  161-162. 

Haddon,  Trevor,  92. 

"Hair  Trunk,  The,"  85. 

Hardy,  Thomas,  79,  247,  347. 

Hazlitt,  William:  4,  9,  79,  247;  life  of,  projected  by  Stevenson, 
135  333 

Henley,  William  E.:  52,  79,  84,  86,  145,  177;  poem  on  Steven- 
son, 243,  244. 

Herrick,  Robert,  58. 

Hewlett,  Maurice,  244. 

"History  of  Joseph,"  24. 

"History  of  Moses,"  24. 

Hugo,  Victor,  83,  235,  245,  247. 

"Humble  Remonstrance,  A,"  159. 

Hyde,  open  letter  to  the  Reverend  Mr.  Hyde  about  Fathor 
Damien,  352. 

Inland  Voyage,  An,  85,  86,  106,  108,  quoted  109-112,  114,  139. 

In  the  South  Seas,  68,  338,  35&-362. 

Island  Nights  Entertainments,  356. 

"Isle  of  Voices,  The,"  28,  32,  190,  202,  244,  347. 

James,  Henry,  4,  366. 

Janet  Nichol,  the  steamship,  352,  356. 

Jenkin,  Mrs.  Fleeming,  52. 

Jersey,  Lady,  370. 

Johnson,  Samuel,  55,  374. 

Keats,  John,  57,  88,  89. 

Kidnapped,  140,  149,  182,  quoted  183-189, 190,  193,  244,  245. 

"King  Matthias's  Hunting  Horn,"  83. 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  79,  360,  367. 

Knox,  John,  83. 

Lamb,  Charles,  4,  9,  79,  247. 

Lang,  Andrew,  79. 

"Lantern  Bearers,  The,"  35,  159,  256. 

"Letter  to  a  Young  Gentleman  Who  Proposei  to  Embrace  thf 

Career  of  Art,"  60. 
Letters  to  "The  Times,"  356,  369. 
Lever,  Charles,  247. 
Little  People,  The,  31,  32,  37. 
L.  J.  R.,  The,  54,  55,  64. 
"Lodging  for  the  Night,  A,"  85,  87,  256,  257,  258,  265,  quoted 

266-295. 


392  INDEX 

London,  Jack,  336,  337. 
London  Magazine,  86. 
Lorna  Doone,  189. 
Low,  W.  H.,  366. 
Lytton,  Bulwer,  83. 

"Manse,  The,"  quoted  14-18,  149. 

"Markheim,"  149,  190,  202,  249,  256-257,  258,  331. 

Marryat,  Frederick,  249. 

Master  of  Ballantrae,  The,  28,  60,  101,  139,  149,  158,  202-205, 

quoted  206-235,  236,  238,  245,  350,  355. 
"Master  of  Ballantrae,  Genesis  of,  The,"  204. 
Mataafe,  370. 

Memoir  of  Fleeming  Jenkin,  149. 
"Memoirs  of  an  Islet,"  35,  quoted  43-44. 
Memories  and  Portraits,  90,  149. 

Meredith,  George,  4,  72;  letter  to,  quoted  72-73,  76,  246,  367. 
Merry  Men,  The,  140,  148,  149,  158,  195,  quoted  196-201,  258. 
Milton,  John,  89. 

"Misadventures  of  John  Nicholson,  The,"  46. 
Montaigne,  Michel  de,  333. 
Moors,  H.  J.,  352,  355,  358,  369,  370. 
More  New  Arabian  Nights,  149. 
"Movements  of  Young  Children,"  83. 
"My  First  Book,"  164,  note. 

New  Arabian  Nights,  148,  178,  241,  243. 

New  Quarterly,  The,  86,  126. 

"Note  on  Realism,  A,"  159. 

"Novel  of  Dumas,  A,"  26,  159,  quoted  162-163. 

"Olalla,"  30,  32,  149,  202. 

"Old  Mortality,"  35,  39. 

"Old  Scotch  Gardener,  An,"  35. 

"Ordered  South,"  66,  67,  72,  75,  76,  quoted  97,  256,  331. 

Ori-a-Ori,  359. 

Osbourne,  Lloyd,  131,  136,  181,  351,  353,  355,  365. 

"Pan's  Pipes,"  68,  70,  quoted  70,  86. 

"Pastoral,"  35,  quoted  38-39,  149. 

"Pavilion  on  the  Links,  The,"  28,  127,  158,  178,  194,  258. 

"Penny  Plain  and  Twopence  Coloured,  A,"  quoted  25-26,  149, 

159,  quoted  162. 
Pepys,  Samuel,  134;  essays  on,  148. 
Picturesque  Notes  on  Edinburgh,  86. 
"Plea  for  Gas  Lamps,  A,"  86. 
Poe,  E.  A.,  58,  250. 
Pope,  Alexander,  89. 
Portfolio,  The,  64,  83,  86. 


INDEX  393 


Prideaux,  W.  R,  bibliography  of  the  works  of  R.  L.  S.,  note, 

149. 
Prince  Otto,  128,  139,  148,  149,  238,  239,  241-242. 
"Providence  and  the  Guitar,"  68,  86,  94,  256,  258,  296-297 

quoted  297-311. 
"Pulvis  et  Umbra,"  68,  quoted  70-71,  76. 

Rasselas,  374. 

Reade,  Charles,  79,  247. 

Reid,  Captain  (of  Equator),  351. 

"Requiem,"  76. 

Road  of  the  Loving  Hearts,  The,  357,  358. 

"Roads,"  64. 

Rob  Roy,  27,  245. 

Roch,  Valentine,  145,  147,  349,  350. 

"Rosa  quo  Locorum,"  26,  27,  355. 

Saville  Club,  52. 

Schiller,  247. 

Schoolboys'  Magazine,  The,  24. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  19,  140,  245. 

Shelley,  Percy  B.,  59. 

"Silverado  Squatters,  The,"  68,  116,  131,  136,  148. 

Simoneau,  Jules,  127. 

Simpson,  Sir  Walter,  63,  64,  83,  85,  106,  108. 

"Sinking  Ship,  The,"  68. 

"Sire  de  Maletroit's  Door,  The,"  85,  86,  178. 

Siron's  Inn,  102. 

Sitwell,  Mrs.,  63,  65,  67,  98,  366. 

Skeltdom,  25,  179. 

"Skerryvore,"  146. 

South  Sea  itinerary,  349-353. 

Spencer,  H.,  62. 

Stanislao,  350. 

"Stepfather's  Story,  The,"  86. 

Stephen,  Leslie,  83. 

Stevenson,  R.  A.  M.,  24,  52,  63,  76,  144,  145,  243. 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  his  career :  ancestry,  12-18 ;  birth  in 
1850  in  Edinburgh,  18;  boyhood  in  Edinburgh,  visits  to 
Mentone  and  Torquay,  19,  34;  effect  of  ill  health  as  a 
child,  21 ;  boyish  writings,  24 ;  schooling,  Edinburgh 
University,  34;  engineering  experiences,  42-45;  choice 
of  a  profession,  41-45;  R.  L.  S.  and  his  father,  46,  55, 
61,  137 ;  appearance  as  a  young  man,  50-53 ;  health,  53 ; 
ambition  to  write,  56-60,  63 ;  his  own  criticism  of  his 
ambition,  60-61 ;  graduation  from  Edinburgh  Univer- 
sity in  1871,  the  study  of  law,  breakdown  in  health  in 
1873;  ordered  south,  62-66;  early  friendships,  62-65; 
early  publications,  63-64,  82-85;  journey  to  Mentone, 
67;  life  in  Mentone,  76;  return  to  Scotland  in  1874,  77; 


394  INDEX 

bar  examinations  in  1875,  84;  life  from  1874  to  1880, 
81-115;  list  of  writings  from  1874  to  1880,  82-86;  health 
at  twenty-five,  82;  meeting  with  Henley,  84;  Barbizon, 
101-106 ;  first  book,  106 ;  appearance  at  twenty-five,  108 ; 
meeting  with  Mrs.  Osbourne  in  1876,  113;  tour  of  the 
Cevennes  in  1878,  114;  journey  to  California,  116-125; 
San  Francisco,  125,  128;  Monterey,  127;  marriage  to 
Mrs.  Osbourne  in  1880,  129;  Silverado,  131,  136;  return 
to  Scotland,  137 ;  Davos,  1880  to  1882,  138 ;  effect  of  ill 
health  on  his  genius  and  writings,  138-143,  149-156;  the 
Riviera,  1882  to  1884,  144-146;  Bournemouth,  1884  to 
1887,  146;  his  father's  death,  147;  Saranac,  1887  to  1888, 
147 ;  list  of  works  from  1880  to  1889,  148-149 ;  the  South 
Sea  cruises,  itinerary,  1888  to  1894,  349-353;  his  ac- 
count of  the  islands,  358-362;  buys  Vailima  Plantation 
at  Apia,  351;  settles  at  Vailima  in  1890,  353;  life  at 
Vailima,  354,  363,  368-371 ;  list  of  works  from  1889  to 
1894,  354-355;  his  own  criticism  of  his  later  works, 
364-366;  death  in  1894  at  Vailima,  353. 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  his  character  and  opinions :  romantic 
temper,  6,  40-41,  46,  50,  68,  372-381;  egotism,  3,  72; 
evolutionary  theories,  12,  30;  general  character  of  his 
work,  7-11 ;  his  genius  for  play,  23,  35-39,  40;  his  theory 
of  dreams,  29-33 ;  R.  L.  S.,  the  poet,  39-41 ;  the  theory 
of  genius,  44-47;  versatility  of  his  genius,  246-248,  256, 
258;  radicalism,  45,  53-55,  93,  112-113;  socialism,  135, 
335-338,  356-359;  courage,  68-76;  theories  of  composi- 
tion, 56-61,  79-81,  87-91,  95-99,  101,  132,  365;  literary 
realism  and  romanticism,  90-92,  104-106,  157-164,  177- 
178,  192-194. 

Stevenson,  Mrs.  R.  L.  (Fanny  Van  de  Grift  Osbourne)  :  86; 
meeting  with  Stevenson,  113,  114-115,  125;  care  of  Ste- 
venson in  California,  128;  marriage,  129;  character  of. 
129-131,  135 ;  at  Silverado,  136 ;  affected  by  elevation  of 
Davos,  143 ;  troubles  at  Marseilles,  144 ;  The  Dynamiter, 
146 ;  engages  cottage  at  Saranac,  147,  191 ;  on  board  the 
Casco,  349;  on  board  the  Equator,  351;  at  Vailima,  353, 
355,  356,  357,  368. 

Stevenson,  Thomas,  41,  42,  46,  47,  55,  62,  84,  147. 

Stevenson,  Mrs.  Thomas  (Margaret  Balfour),  13,  349,  351, 
foot-note  353-354. 

Stevensoniana,  243,  370. 

St  Ives,  140,  180,  238,  355,  364,  366. 

"Story  of  a  Lie,  The,"  46,  126,  236. 

Strange  Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,  The,  28,  30,  149, 
158,  190,  194,  202,  244,  246,  248-255,  quoted  254-255,  256, 
331. 

Strong,  Austin,  353. 

Strong,  Mrs.  Isobel,  352,  353,  355,  357,  358,  366. 

Suicide  Club,  The,  244. 


INDEX  395 


Swift,  Jonathan,  244. 
Swinnerton,  F.,  153. 

Symonds,  J.  A.:  compared  with  Stevenson,  141;  Renaissance 
in  Italy,  141. 

"Talks  and  Talkers,"  148. 

Temple  Bar,  The,  86. 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  4,  79,  156,  246. 

Thoreau,  H.  D. :  62,  378 ;  essay  on,  128,  131-134. 

"Thrawn  Janet,"  28,  148,  201. 

Titian,  25. 

Todd,  John,  37,  38,  41. 

Travels  with  a  Donkey,  86,  87,  94,  114. 

Treasure  Island,  25,  32,  60,  140,  148,  164,  quoted  165-176,  177, 

179,  180,  181,  189,  190,  191,  192,  193,  244,  245,  246,  335, 

362. 
"Treasure  of  Franchard,  The,"  68,   148,   190,  243,  256,  296, 

quoted  312-314,  314-315,  quoted  315-331. 
Trollope,  Anthony,  58. 
Trudeau,  E.  L.,  141,  147. 
Tusitala,  358,  370. 
"Two  Saint  Michaels'  Mounts,  The"  85. 

Underwood's  Magazine,  148. 

Vaekehu,  350. 

Vailima  Letters,  362-371. 

"Vendetta  in  the  West,  A,"  127. 

"Villon,  Francois,"  87,  112,  257-259,  quoted  259-264. 

Virginibus  Puerisque,  45,  54,  55,  75,  85,  87,  148,  246. 

"Voces  Fidelium,"  43. 

"Walking  Tours,"  85,  94. 
Weir  of  Hermiston,  46,  192,  236-238,  355,  365. 
Wells,  H.  G.,  80. 
Weyman,  Stanley,  367. 
"When  the  Devil  Was  Well,"  83. 
Whitman,  Walt,  62,  69,  83,  134. 
"Will  o'  the  Mill,"  85,  86,  87,  94,  190,  256,  258,  37S-377. 
"Winter's  Walk,  A,"  35,  99. 
Wordsworth,  William,  89. 

Wrecker,  The,  46,  139,  178,  181-182,  236,  239-241,  335,  336,  351, 
354,  362,  366. 

Yoshida  Torajiro,  128,  135. 
Young  Folks,  148,  190. 


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BROWNING 

HOW  TO  KNOW  HIM 

By  WILLIAM  LYON  PHELPS 

Lampson  Professor  of  English 
Yale  University 

ALFRED  NOTES,  The  Poet  and 
Critic,  Princeton,  N.  J. 
"  'Browning:  How  to  Know  Him* 
should  be  of  the  greatest  value  to 
all  college  students  of  Browning; 
and  it  is  certainly  the  best  guide  to 
a  right  appreciation  of  him  that  could 
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read  it  from  cover  to  cover,  twice, 
with  an  ever  increasing  sense  of  its 
breadth,  humanity  and  practical  use- 
fulness." 

SIB  SIDNEY  LEE,  University  of 
London,  Eng. 
"The  lucidity  of  Professor  Phelps' 
interpretation  of  Browning's  work 
moves  my  highest  admiration.  The 
book  does  Browning,  to  my  thinking, 
fuller  justice  than  any  other  with 
which  I  have  met.  The  difficulties 
which  beset  the  reader  of  Browning 
vanish  at  Professor  Phelps'  illumi- 
nating touch." 


CARLYLE 

HOW  TO  KNOW  HIM 

By   BLISS  PERRY 
Professor  of  English 
Harvard  University 

JOSIAH  H.  PENNIMAN,  Professor 
of  English,  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania. 
"Bliss  Perry's  book,  'Carlyle:  How 
to  Know  Him,'  is  very  illuminating. 
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PROFESSOR  W.  E.  SIMONDS, 
Knox  College,  Galesburg,  111. 
"Professor  Perry's  book  certainly 
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